


Fever Of Deceit

by springandbysummerfall



Category: Dragonball Z
Genre: Drama, Politics, Romance, Science Fiction
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-02
Updated: 2016-07-25
Packaged: 2018-04-12 12:32:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 44,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4479365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/springandbysummerfall/pseuds/springandbysummerfall
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Vegeta is the Dark Prince, grappling for his throne against Saiyan and clandestine, outside forces. Bulma is a destitute, overlooked engineer indentured on Vegetasei. In a bid for her freedom, Bulma ends up snared in a contract with the Prince. As the tension thickens on Vegetasei, can they overcome their differences to stop an insidious threat to their respective worlds?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

A shadow among shadows, a slight figure hesitated. Marble cool against her back as she straightened against the wall, she stopped to glance at her small radar. Detecting no ki's headed her way, she tucked the radar back into the folds of her black hooded jumpsuit and made a beeline down the hall. Two intersections north, four doors to the left, and out the Palace to race through the darkened gardens towards the Science Wing. There, she would lean against the outside alabaster and strip off her jumpsuit, folding it into her arms inconspicuously to walk the deserted halls back to her small, austere apartment in the basement, which Vegetasei's scientists begrudgingly called “home." ...Home free. She would fall upon Gohan's sleeping form on the rough plaid couch in the living room, shaking him awake and laughing, and they would embrace tightly while she told him with real, honest to goodness conviction, "You're going home. You're going home." Everything hinged on the humble storage device nestled in her waistband.

She had met no resistance while uploading the data from the Military Wing, whose security was shockingly laughable. And laugh she would. She would break down into wild, desperate, sobbing laughter on Gohan's shoulder, because she was no spy, no secret agent. She was a peon, a measly lab aid, and here she had broken into the Saiyan Empire's system and hacked all their martial project data. Her heart, still hammering wildly, assured her she was still alive, a feat made possible solely because she had been lucky enough to survive to this day...the day her own science triumphed over the draconian technology ravaged from other worlds and lauded by the Saiyans. Her hand touched her chest softly, willing her heart to slow. Freedom was right in front of her, she could almost reach out and touch it. It was palpable, it was heady. Just two more intersections to pass, four doors down, and a left out into the courtyard, where she could slip past the night blooming jasmine and snoring sentries with ease. If there was one thing living at the heart of the Empire taught her, it was that the Empire was becoming derelict, rotting from the inside in a greedy, cocksure stupor. The Saiyans had once been known for their preemptive strength; now, it was common knowledge, at least on-world, that their pride was an empty gesture. The Empire had grown lax-which was exactly what she was banking on.

She crept down the hall mutely, palms grazing the walls for comfort and second sight. Saiyans had much better eyesight in the dark than Earthlings, but her radar assured her that there was no one around she didn't expect. She was just through the last intersection, with only two more recessed doorways to pass. She could begin to smell the salty air of the wide open world that the Palace's thick granite walls barred against. Only dust, sand, and salt comprised her knowledge of the outside world on Vegetasei. She had lived on the planet for years and could count the times she had breathed in fresh air on one hand. "Fresh" was relative, however, considering Vegetasei's heat cooked any moisture right out of the air, transforming the planet's breathable air into a stale afterthought. When she returned to her living quarters, she'd have to empty twin piles of sand out of her shoes, scrub away the dusty film that coated her skin, and stuff the rough toilet paper up her nose to counter a nose bleed. The outside world may have held all the newness of an adventure, but it owned none of the beauty or comforts of her home world.

The Science Wing was her world now. Life began there, every day at 0500, and ended there as she squeezed her eyes shut against the pitch of a lights out curfew at 2100 each night. Vegetasei was all salt flats, an ancient, red giant hovering protectively near, and blearily long work hours, pushing someone else's small science. Although she was among other exiles, remnants and relics of worlds that had been purged like her own, and men and women of intellect who should have rightfully been a support structure when she had been shepherded to Vegetasei those eight years ago, friendship remained an Earth novelty, a memory buried in that distant, sweet spot in her mind, of which she rarely had the courage to step through the threshold anymore. Members of the Science Wing were contractually obligated to avoid rapport with their peers, lest the paranoid Empire's secrets trickle out. Here on Vegetasei, she had only the drop tile ceiling, the throaty hum of her small fridge, and blinding fluorescent bulbs to keep her company. For the most part on Vegetasei, every day was the same-excepting the pervading, silent threat of disappearing in the night. Scientists who wronged an Elite, whether or not their data was correct, whether or not they knew about their data's sponsor, were routinely pulled from their beds for midnight executions. The Elites gripped the Science Wing with an iron fist. Both facts made this excursion all the more sickeningly thrilling.

Where would she go once First Strike granted her freedom? Bulma's breath caught with anticipation as she made her way down the hall. Would there be snow, a crisp, hushed blanket of it? A crackling fireplace a sentinel against long winters? Maybe the placating freedom offered up by the ocean? Maybe she would get a cottage in the thick of the mountains where she would wake up late each morning, reveling in the renewed ownership of her body as she stretched languidly, her back arching in the big, pillowy bed which she would childishly, reluctantly roll out of. She'd mosey across the house to make a pot of strong tea. The coffee in the Science Wing was weakly brewed and sour, and she wouldn't miss it. Maybe she would sit outside on the deck aimlessly, maybe read a book? She hadn't seen one in eight years. She'd hold the book to her face and flip through the pages, inhaling the brisk smell of cut paper. No computers in sight. She'd paint the living room a shocking green, the bedroom a dreamy blue. The teacups she savored her tea from, a deep red. She'd cook her own meals. She'd go into town for groceries, and the grocer would wave and call good morning, calling her name, not her number, #42019, as was her identifier on Vegetasei. She would never have to look at another lab or lab coat again, or the black hospital slippers they issued as part of her Sleep Uniform that she was currently sneaking through the Palace in. Instead, she would go barefoot everywhere. Maybe she would have a closet full of dresses when she settled down, her wardrobe a performance of texture and pattern. And heels? She shied away then, cautious and unfamiliar with the intoxicating nature of daydreaming. Her wardrobe was issued on Vegetasei, not chosen. Like all scientists, the gray scrubs, white lab coat, and black oxfords were her standard, every day uniform. To sleep in, they were issued two pairs of black polyester-type pajamas and slippers. She owned four pairs of high waisted beige briefs, four beige underwires, and four pairs of pilled, white polyester socks. Could she-would she-wear heels? Her heart skipped a beat. She had spent years rolling her eyes at her mother's love of fashion and homemaking, and here she was, day dreaming heels and homemade biscuits drenched in honey. Pretty things hadn't been what kept her alive all these years, though. It had been the keen intellect and curiosity she had inherited from her father. She frowned resolutely, the last landmark in her line of sight. She would live to preserve her mother's memory, and she wouldn't die wasting her father's talents on a murdering Empire.

There the gardens lay, a sprawl of night blooming blossoms and several desert rose hybrids. A wall of labyrinthine hedges shielded any visitors of the garden from curious eyes in the Palace, a murmuring fountain poised in the center of them beneath a ribbon of stars. For just a moment, she could admit to some beauty on the world that held her hostage. She took a moment for a small, solemn smile. She could see the Science Wing just a ways further, a domed building with a few winking lights. With a tired sigh, she stepped onto the shadowed garden path.

Only to be shoved up against the outside Palace wall. It knocked the air out of her as she instinctually gripped the wrists which held her.

"What are you doing sneaking around the Royal Palace in the middle of the night?" A roughened, deep voice crooned. Her blood ran cold. Not only did he know she didn't belong, but he sounded like he'd enjoy playing the cat to her mouse. She wasn't prepared to be intercepted or questioned...more like just slain. She had to think fast.

"Getting a breath of fresh air, sir," she squeaked, trying to sound convincing.

She could only see his outline in the darkness, the set of his wide, round soldiers uncompromising, cape pins glinting against them. Like most Saiyans, he had wild, thick hair, which crested upward. The wild sweep of his hair was misleading, though. Rather than towering over her like most Saiyans, this one only stood a few inches taller than her, and it made him seem more human, if only for a second.

She saw a cruel, hard smirk tug at his lips and knew she wasn't fooling him.

"Don't be foolish, little human. I've been watching you prowl around my Palace, and I demand," he encouraged silkily, "to know why."

To her horror, she giggled nervously. The Saiyans cruel smirk drooped into a hard frown. Just as he began to seem to question her sanity, hundreds of volts of electricity erupted from a thong around her hand as it closed around his wrist. The shock of it gripped him, and he seized beneath it, loosing his grip on the collar of her shirt as he fell to his knees.

She ran.

Sprinting through the garden, hurdling over rare orchids and bluebells, she raced towards the Science Wing. She had calibrated the stunner to take down a full sized Saiyan, and she had no reservations in using it. She didn't anticipate to be intercepted by him again. But every cell in her body was screaming at her to run, to preserve the dream that for just a moment flickered with uncertainty when that soldier wrapped his fists around her shirt.

Just as she sailed over the last desert scrub, a hand fisted in the back of her shirt and the dream flickered in front of her and extinguished completely. She was flung into the air, soaring upward as her limbs waved wildly as she shrieked.

"I don't appreciate being played a fool," she heard him growl beneath her as he reached out and grabbed for her ankle, preventing her from smashing into the ground but jerking her to a halt in the air to sway upside down beneath him. She prayed frantically that her radar and the storage device remained snugly in her waistband.

"Now, are we going to get down to business, or am I just going to have to cut this fun short and incinerate you before you even hit the ground?"

"Fun?!" She wailed. "Fun for you, maybe!"

He chuckled humorlessly above her. "I'm waiting."

If she gave up her position, she was dead, and the dream was dead with her. And if she refused to play to his fiddle, she was dead, and the dream dead, too. She fought back a cry of frustration. She had been so close, until this prick showed up!

First Strike was her only salvation. If she threw them under the bus, she may lose her way out. There had to be some middle ground she could take, some compromise which didn't completely bankrupt her. Plus, she was dealing with a low level guard here. Saiyan brawn wasn't particularly known for it's reasoning abilities. Although he held her upside down, she may still have the upper hand.

"Alright, I'll spill! Just please put me down!" She hollered, trying to affect an air of contriteness.

Slowly, she was lowered to the ground, until her hands hit the gravel and he released her ankle. She let out a little "ooph" of air and pushed herself back to her feet, readjusting her head covering and patting her waist band. She relaxed an inch. The drive and the radar were still there in one piece.

The man cleared his throat. She got the feeling he wasn't to be jerked around, if his impressive posturing indicated anything. He stood, arms crossed, legs braced, scowling, the gold tips of his pristine white boots glinting in the starlight. She couldn't make out any more of his uniform. Not an average guard, then. She gulped. He had kind of a beautiful face, actually. The sharp angles of his profile fit his barbed humor. His full lips were drawn into a no-nonsense line as he tapped his bicep. An Elite guard, then? Someone used to getting what he wants. Why was he so interested in her, then? ...In keeping her alive? He'd already had several opportunities to blast her. She was going to have to be very careful if she wanted to keep her head.

"I was taking something that wasn't mine." She reached into her waistband and palmed the radar, handing it over to him. He glanced at it down his nose but didn't touch it. She moved slowly and deliberately then, understanding she was playing with fire. "It's a ki radar. It locates and tracks ki's."

"But you didn't pick up on mine?"

She scowled, barely admitting with any grace, "No."

That seemed to please him. "You didn't pick up on mine for the same reason you didn't shock me to death." He flashed her a dazzling smile before quickly smothering it with malice. "Your...weapon..isn't calibrated for someone of my power level. Most guards have a power level I superseded while I was still in the womb. And that was who you were expecting, am I right?" A smug, devilish expression grew on his face.

She crossed her arms and huffed.

"I can also suppress my power level," he spun darkly, and her heart gave a little thump. "So let's be clear. If you think you are dealing with the average Saiyan," he stepped toward her, peering at her with an eyebrow raised disaffectedly, "you have miscalculated."

"I was expecting that a Saiyan I crossed paths with would be exploding with overconfidence, and it seems I was proven right," she snapped reproachfully before she could think twice. Her eyes widened as she realized her error. Saiyans didn't tolerate name calling, no matter their rank.

His eyes flashed as his leg swept her feet out from under her. She fell on to her back painfully and winced as his hand closed around his throat.

"If you like to play," his canines glinted fiercely, "I can oblige."

"Hit a nerve, did I?" She croaked against his grip. Now wildly in fear of her life, words spewed haphazardly out of her mouth. Inside, she was screaming at herself for not properly cowering. She had years of experience in meekness. How was it at the one time it truly mattered, she had to be a wise ass?

"Who do you work for?" He growled, squeezing her throat to emphasize he expected an honest answer.

What did she have to live for now? There was no way she was getting out of this alive. She fell to pieces inside. She was as good as dead. The only thing that mattered was letting this Saiyan and this spiral of stars above her know just how humiliated she had been, how she despised all eight grueling years on this sanctified planet.

"First Strike," she grit. "So there, how do you like them apples!"

His initial consternation was replaced by flabbergasted scorn. "What? Are you daft, woman?"

He was so sincere that it took her a moment to realize he was waiting for a reply. "You don't believe me?"

A frown creased his features again, drawing his eyebrows together, not unbecomingly. "You're an informant, than?"

She nodded against the more relaxed pressure at her throat.

"For First Strike."

Again, she nodded, puzzled.

"And they sent you here to collect that?" He jerked his head toward the radar in her hand she had forgone. He seemed to be buying it, despite the imposing tilt of his brows.

"Why? Of what use is that to a group of intergalactic guerillas?" He nearly spat the last bit out.

"It's highly advanced technology. Don't be fooled by its simple function. This is a small scale device, a prototype. Just imagine if this were capable of long range." She bluffed.

But to her panic, his consideration drew upwards into a roguish smirk. "A First Strike spy, then. Just what I needed."

"What?" Did she hear right?

"You will play a game of duplicity for me. I need to know all First Strike's reports of goings on in Saiyan affairs. Anything Saiyan politics, especially concerning Royals and Upper Elites, I need to be informed of. It goes without saying that I will spare your life tonight for this. Do we have a deal?"

"What? That's preposterous! First of all, I am not 007! I don't report to anyone willing to tell me anything." It wasn't a lie, and her fear wasn't feigned. "I did what they wanted me to do and now I'm outta here. And how do I know you'll keep your end of the bargain?" The thought of making a deal with a Saiyan made her skin crawl. She wasn't even sure she could hold up her end of the bargain. First Strike had briefed her on nothing but what was absolutely imperative to claim the Saiyan's martial data. It was a highly dangerous mission, and the fact that they had sent some half baked scientist to complete it spoke volumes for their value of her life. But when she had been notified of an offer from First Strike, a loosely based intergalactic Resistance group notoriously and actively opposed to both the Cold and Saiyan Empires, with a job to gather some information that could buy her absolute freedom, how could she refuse? The only other option was to sit and wait for her inevitable death at the hands of some snubbed Elite, Elites who regularly paid the scientists to contrive and falsify numbers that would advance their own politicking. Unfortunately, the scientists worked in the dark, deemed less than third class, off-world garbage whose only use was to unravel the technology the Saiyans couldn't figure out themselves. There was no room for advancement, and no window of opportunity headed her way. She had taken probably the only chance she'd ever get to get off planet. The fact that she had made it this far was astounding.

"For the same reason you will keep yours. You refuse at the peril of your life," he warned. "Not that I personally care whether you take one more measly breath or one hundred more. But I don't go against my word."

Her eyes flicked over his expression, scanning for cracks in his countenance, but he seemed serious. She sighed and knocked her head against the gravel in exasperation.

"Okay, yeah, sure. We have a deal."

She was pulled suddenly to her feet, wobbling to regain her balance while he stood, simply observing her.

"Little woman," he crooned, and there was no mistaking his deadly intent. "I will hold my end of the bargain, if you hold yours. Cross me," his hand suddenly glowed, a blue as bright and cutting as the flame of a torch, and he twirled the ball of ki between his fingers thoughtfully. "Cross me, and your death will be the least of your concerns." The smirk he gave her was absolutely feral.

She gulped. "Where would you like to meet to trade information?"

"The gardens are fine," he remarked flatly, gesturing over his shoulder. "Every fifth day. I will expect you out here at this time. And I will expect," he glanced at her radar with apprehensive amusement, "you'll have no problems getting here?"

"I foresee no problems," she agreed grudgingly.

"Good. Until then," he called, and then jetted into the sky, his cape whipping behind him.

In the soft light of the stars, she saw the flash of the Royal House insignia on the breast of his armor as he swept upward.

She stifled a gasp.

The man wasn't a guard.

He was a Royal.

There was no way she could double cross him now.

She sulked the rest of the way back to the Science Wing after sweeping the area one final time for ki's. She didn't worry about guards once she reentered the Wing. The doors inside the Wing were all locked at curfew, effectively shutting everyone inside their living space, and Saiyans thought very little of off-worlder initiative. What they hadn't counted on was her technical prowess. She was surrounded by geneticists, physicists, entomologists...what no one knew about her was that she wasn't simply any scientist.

She was an engineering genius.

She uncovered the key pad outside the door in the dank hall and overrode the command. Her door wheezed open, sliding into the wall. She stepped into the darkness, and the door swept shut behind her, closing her in.

A lamp clicked on. Although they cut the power at curfew, she had rigged her electronics to her own power source from pieces pilfered here and there from the labs. She was in no danger of being caught; her apartment boasted no windows, and the door was air tight.

Huddled on the couch in a ragged blanket sat Gohan, blinking against the light, although his raven black hair was long enough now to hang loosely in his eyes.

"Miss Bulma?"

She smiled gently and sat next to him, brushing the hair out of his eyes, and held his hand. Rubbing away sleep with his other hand, he looked up at her in anticipation, clutching her. "Did you do it?" He whispered.

Helplessly, Bulma broke out into a grin, which she followed with a curt nod. She pulled the drive from her waistband and held it out to him triumphantly. His eyes widened and his mouth parted in wonder.

Bulma then sighed, her hand falling into her lap. As a second thought, she put the drive in end table's drawer and began unwinding the mask from her head.

"I did it, although I got more than I bargained for." She threw the covering onto the table and again sighed. "I had to make a deal with the devil."

Gohan's big dark eyes raked her face in confusion. He was so mature for his age.

"I was cornered by a Royal, who gave me the option of either biting the dust or informing for him."

"On First Strike?" Gohan gasped.

She shook her head. "That's what's so curious about it. He wasn't interested in First Strike's goings on aside from their usefulness as espionage against other nobles. Royals and Upper Elites, specifically. It's baffling."

"And you agreed," Gohan reiterated, needing her confirmation to accept this new turn of events that could have them spiraling into doom at any minute.

"Yes," she stated calmly, although she felt anything but. "He's not aware I'm a transplant, that I work in the labs. He assumed I was a spy, bade me to gather information on Saiyans for him, and blasted off."

"And you're going to?" He cast her a doubtful look.

She frowned, staring down at the ground in consternation. "I intend to. I have no choice! I'm lucky I escaped with my head, let alone some privacy!" She groaned, planting her face in her hand. "I need to call your mother."

Gohan squeezed her hand, and then nodded, gently extracting his hand from her nervous grip. "I'll go get the receiver ready." She nodded and peered out from between the gaps in her fingers. She heard rustle and clatter as Gohan uncovered and set up the receiver as she stared absently into her small, open kitchen.

Gohan had come to live with her just over a year ago. He was the only child of her childhood best friend. His quiescence, his straight, fine hair and his grave studiousness, however, came directly from his mother. Bulma had balked when ChiChi asked her to take him on as a measure of protection. Here? Are you serious?! It turned out to be a wise gamble. Bulma got a lab aid out of it, and she also got her first company in seven years. Although Gohan was only ten, he, like her, had grown up these last eight years in dire straights. He was just two when Earth was purged. Bulma had been swept away by Saiyans ordered to gobble up anyone of any technical skill. Goku and ChiChi, however, had invoked the hand of God. Kami had seen what was to occur and spirited the little family away, away from their Mt. Paozu tranquility, never to return again. Since then, the Gods had used Goku as a tool, refining him in order to wield him as a sharply honed blade against galactic tyrants. The Colds and the Saiyans were spreading a taint, a creeping blackness across the complex beauty of the universe, and it was Goku's lot in life, they were all told, to halt their advancement. Once Goku had finished his training with Kaio Sama, the other Kai's had big plans for him- -in territory his son couldn't safely follow. To be fair, ChiChi didn't have many places to send him. Bulma just happened to be the only known survivor, besides the Son family. ChiChi must have felt that, although it was hostile, Bulma's environment was at least stable.

Like a ghost, Bulma wandered into the only bedroom, watching Gohan as he set up her computer and used the appropriately secure channels to contact his mother. He was sharp and attentive, and Bulma knew it pained ChiChi that she couldn't secure a safer, more relaxed future for him, one where his only worries were fitting in and maintaining good grades.

There was only enough space for a small bed and a small desk, and Bulma squeezed beside Gohan, giving the screen baleful looks. She should be calling ChiChi to gloat about her success. Instead, she wasn't sure how well received the news would be that she sold herself, and Gohan by default, to a Royal's whims. As if the Elites weren't bad enough, the Royals were a particularly feared bunch. Ruthless, caustic, and self-serving, the only thing that held them back, unlike the Elites, was their mood that day. Elites at least had to abide by Saiyan law. At the head of this oligarchy was the King, who was rumored to be so ill that he was completely removed from empire building, a responsibility left to his advisors. Beneath the King, but above the advisors, there were whispers of the solitary heir to the Saiyan Empire. The Dark Prince. Bulma shuddered, the Royal's hands ghosting against her neck. The only thing that anyone knew of him was that they wanted to stay far, far away from him. He was the sins of the Empire in the flesh. He had single handedly taken over a whole quadrant with the flick of his wrist. He was bad news. And anyone even remotely related to the man, giving her orders, was enough to send Bulma's heart flatlining.

Just as she began sinking into a pit of despair, the familiar chew of static erupted from the receiver, and after a few tense minutes listening to beeps thrown into the void, the screen's gray static transformed into a recognizable face.

"Mom!"

"Cheech!"

ChiChi's worn, strong face smiled at them before settling into its characteristic glower. "I hope you have good news for me."

Gohan and Bulma glanced at each other before each taking a breath to speak. Gohan nodded at Bulma to start. Bulma clutched her knees, the lines from years of hardship now clearly etched on her face.

"ChiChi, I have both good and bad news. I've got the device."

ChiChi's face lit up. Bulma's success meant her son would be finally out of harms way, residing with Bulma until Goku could finish his tutelage under the Kai's and end this blasted war. ChiChi's dour constitution could only be stretched so far. She was wearing thin. Her husband trained day after day with the best sensei's the universe had to offer, leaving her bereft of companionship, responsible only for caring for his basic needs and no room for affection. She was increasingly isolated, and the icy walls she had erected once Earth had been destroyed weren't going to hold too much longer. But instead of thawing out, she was breaking up. "That's great news! What's the catch?"

"I was caught," Bulma confessed wearily. "By a noble, of all people. A very...high ranking...noble."

ChiChi's eyes were as big as saucers. "You weren't killed?"

Bulma's face twisted into a wry smirk. "No. If you can believe it, he wants me to spy for him. And not on First Strike. On other Saiyans, through First Strike. That was the condition I met for my life."

ChiChi was uncharacteristically speechless. "Well. That is interesting. What about Gohan?"

Gohan fidgeted beside Bulma. Bulma shook her head. "He doesn't know about Gohan. Or that I live and work here. He should be safe. I disabled all surveillance before I left. There's no way I was followed or observed."

ChiChi nodded. "Don't give him any more information than you have to, Bulma. And stay low. I don't want either of you getting hurt when victory is so close in our grasp."

It took Bulma and Gohan to understand there was more to that comment than just an affirmation. As far as they knew, this cold war between the Saiyans and the Colds, increasingly agitated by First Strike, was a chronic element in their lives.

Gohan spoke first. "What do you mean, Mom?"

"Bulma may get her retreat first," ChiChi announced, "but we'll all have respite soon. Goku has Ascended."

Both Bulma and Gohan's jaws dropped.

"He's done it," she continued softly. "He's become a Super Saiyan."

"That's it. The war's at its end?" Bulma asked no one in disbelief.

ChiChi nodded gravely. "Word is that something big is brewing between the Colds and the Saiyans that First Strike has its hands in. That's when Goku will make his move."

"Home," Gohan sighed, the exhaustion evident in the slope of his shoulders.

"Home," Bulma echoed, sagging against him.

Now she just had to dance around this Saiyan Royal until her salvation arrived.


	2. Chapter 2

Bulma's eyes fluttered as she fought sleepiness, concentrating on soldering two wires together, one among a rainbowed tangle of them at her desk. The bright fluorescence bleached her face as it revealed everything in her workspace in its stark unimpressiveness. A white cubicle, tall enough to isolate her from her other co-workers. One boxy computer, set up to prohibit her from anything but her assignment and monitor her work. A few pens and pencils strewn on her desk, a small tool box and a micrometer pressed against the wall beside a gray file box.

Despite the monitoring, Bulma was moving brazenly forward on her secret project, certain her work would remain unimpeded. At least, until lunch time, which was fast approaching. Bulma hurried to finish her work, glancing once more at the blueprints for reassurance. What she was doing was against regulation and carried a severe penalty. But she couldn't get ChiChi's lined, worn face out of her minds eye, her firm but deflated reassurance that Goku had reached the legendary and that it was only time until the Kai's chose to make his existence known. Goku was training relentlessly for a war to end all wars, and ChiChi was trying desperately to stay afloat, alone on the home front. The least she could do was give them the tools to make certain their arrival was unanticipated and as smooth as possible.

"Damn scouter," Bulma grumbled under her breath, blinking blearily. It was bad enough the end of her world for the last eight years was coming to an explosive end soon.

She would never admit it, especially around Gohan, but she harbored a creeping fear that her old friend wouldn't be strong enough to purge the Saiyan Empire of its Elites, opening up spots for intergalactic ambassadors to stabilize and reform the Empire. She hadn't seen Goku for years, not since they had been rounded up during the invasion. Her stalwart friend was amazingly versatile and strong, but he had never seen the heart of the Empire, where Bulma labored out her days. They may be overconfident, but the Saiyans were known historically for their superior strategizing and strength in the face of adversity. Goku may be of Saiyan blood -a fact that they were all surprised to learn- and he may have a Kai-backed passion for justice, but the Saiyans were ruthless and clever. They fought dirty, and their hearts were black. She hated the doubt that pervaded her, but Goku was going to have to be underhanded to outsmart the Elites when the time came for debts to be repaid.

And what of her life once she were free? The thought had been intoxicatingly powerful for years, and yet now that it seemed near, she was growing unbearably nervous. She didn't know if she could even really fully adjust to life outside the Saiyan Empire. Eight years of a military schedule and the threat of death like some game of Russian Roulette had sapped her of her youth and her hope. She wasn't even sure she had the stubborn perseverance that characterized her as a teenager any more, not when survival meant yielding day in, day out. She was starting to think she was doing all this work for Goku and the Kai's...and the Saiyan Elite who had confronted her in the garden...simply because she didn't know what else to do with her life. She was a shell of her former self, life's colors drained in this desert landscape so that the only reminder of who she was and had been was the color of her hair.

With a sigh, she tidied up the wiring of the new scouter and slipped it into her coat pocket before pulling a stack of paperwork toward her.

The Saiyan Elite...

She had received a brief, impersonal, and ambivalent message from her landlord this morning.

"I'm to forward a message onto you, number 42019," he had informed her curtly. "Your patron is requesting a meeting with you at 2200 at the place which you agreed to the partnership."

"Excuse me?" Bulma had asked. She had never been patronized, which she was entirely relieved about. Having a patron dictate one's work was asking for trouble. There was nothing desirable about having a power hungry, sociopathic politician spurring one to present biased results before hanging them out to dry.

"Your patron, 42019," he reiterated with annoyance. "He instructs you to be at your assigned meeting place at 2200 tonight. He also included this personal message."

He handed her a sealed missive carelessly and turned back to his computer. Bulma stared at the missive with bewilderment until she felt a wave of cold fear settle over her.

She drew the letter from its envelope slowly. A deep burgundy wax seal at its center, stamped with the three pronged Royal Saiyan insignia. With a mixture of horror and curiosity, she slowly ran her thumb over the wax seal, the indentation of the insignia smooth against the thick curve of her thumb. The thought of his fingers previously in the same spot overwhelmed her.

"42019."

His bark shocked her out of her stupor. Her head snapped up and she snapped to attention, standing and bowing quick and low. Her landlord gave her an irritated once over before turning back to his computer and ignoring her.

The Elite...the Royal Elite, rather...was calling on her to fulfill her promise tonight.

Bulma slid her thumb under the seal, and with only a little resistance, it cracked open, the heavy weight letter card yawning open reluctantly. A handsome script, so at odd with his rough edges.

'Tonight. 2200.'

The thought filled her with a sullen dread.

* * *

 

The Right Hand of Darkness swept down the hall, his scarlet cape billowing behind him, the only sound preceding him the firm slap of his gold toed boots echoing against marble. Royal guards stood at attention every few meters within dark recesses in the walls of the hall. Not that they were necessary. At least, not for him. He was the sole being in the expansive Saiyan Empire who could detect ki's, even if clumsily, and incinerate them and any 'threat' to him with his pointer finger. There was no one in this damned palace who could even hope to match the unprecedented strength that was already becoming the stuff of legends. And still.

The Prince of Saiyan's fine, aristocratic features furrowed, his upper lip curling in disgust. And here he was, having to parley to a bunch of aged plutocrats who wanted nothing more than to twist Royal Decree and tradition to advance the Empire's business and line their pockets. It was particularly un-Saiyan.

That kind of opportunism-before-nation had only flourished as the Prince had campaigned across the galaxies, 'negotiating' for new planets to add to the Empire and striking fear into the hearts of any who opposed- -or rather, the hearts of those still living, those who heeded news of the rampant destruction that always visited with a spurned Saiyan Prince.

The stories spun about the Prince terrorizing and extinguishing races with the upwards curve of a smirk, and the daunting, coercive demeanor that billowed around him like a cloak enlisted many to capitulate to his demands as soon as he stepped onto dry land, who figured living with a browbeating overlord was better than dying like a bug squished under a shoe. Should they refuse, well, then, the Saiyan Prince thought that was a noble enough way to die. That was Saiyan. That was battle, fair and square. None of this scheming that had plagued the Elites and his father's advisors for the last half century he'd been away.

The Prince's eyes flicked to the side. In the West Wing, his father lay dying, without any indication that he was going to hand over the Empire to his son prematurely. He hadn't even been declared regent! A low growl escaped the Prince's throat. Not that he particularly wanted to inherit an Empire. But the Empire was going to seed around him, and those left in charge were only squeezing it dry. He knew those graspy bastards were just lying in wait like wolves for the next feast, whether the Saiyans delivered it or not. That's what he had to uncover; he had to prove that which was becoming more evident to him every day he had been back planet-side. Unfortunately, he wasn't very sluethy; he was much better at search-and-destroy. Rage simmered just below the surface, the ape in him itching for release. Here he had been sent on a fool's errand for the better half of his youth, while those scavenger's reaped his due.

And he couldn't just kill them. Oh, it would be so easy. A few ki bursts as his hand swept genteelly across the meeting table, bestowing upon them a gift which would only invoke their curdling screams. And his father's advisors and Upper Elites would be nothing, more minuscule than ash. It was what they had their hands in that would haunt him should he proceed in that direction. He just knew they held some leverage, some checkmate to move against him should he act as they expected the impulsive Prince of Darkness would. That the very men and women who were divinely appointed to protect their Saiyan heritage would plot against the heir- -had, most likely, kept him away for so long with that prerogative- -made him murderously furious.

But, against all logic, he couldn't do it. He wanted to, oh harsala-izu he wanted to, but in the strange way that he was coming reluctantly to know, he didn't want to. He wanted more to outwit and outmaneuver them. He wanted to prove he was the master strategist and the truest blooded Saiyan. It was risky, but, well, he wasn't known for walking on the safe side.

That's where his little spy came in. After this waste and mockery of convening with the Elite Elders, he would just be biding his time until he could shake his spy down for information later tonight. Five days had passed since they first spoke, and hopefully he could soon be done with the little snoop, slay some traitors in good fun, and take his Empire back.

The royal guards held open the doors of the meeting room, staring stoically ahead with one fist over their hearts, and he strode into the room, the chatter dying down as they bowed in the presence of the heir of Vegetasei, who glowered at them, one by one.

He wouldn't let any of them forget that one couldn't cross the Prince of all Saiyans and live.

The cook scooped mashed...whatever...from an enormous pan and flung it onto Bulma's plate. She grimaced as it made an unappetizing plop when it struck her cheap plastic plate. The line shuffled forward, and Bulma slid her plate down the metal counter and waited for the men in front of her to have their thumbprints scanned before straggling to their assigned seats in the cafeteria. Finally, it was Bulma's turn, and she held her hand out to the laser, which beeped shrilly, alerting everyone know that she passed inspection. She turned from the cramped line and headed out the door to the large cafeteria, the scouter bumping against her thigh, when suddenly she collided with a wall of muscle. Jerking back to save her food before her only meal toppled to the ground, she looked upwards into the face of the jerk who had been loitering outside the doorway...only to swallow with fear.

A burly, bald Saiyan sneered down at her, and to her increasing horror, a few of his friends joined him at her side.

"Well, well, well." The Saiyan placed his fists on his terrifyingly large hips. "You weren't watching where you were going, little Earthling. Did you see something you wanted, but didn't know how to ask?"

Bulma grew pale as the other Saiyans leered at her over his shoulder.

"Go ahead and take a moment to get on your knees and beg us for mercy," he crowed, "since you are so intent on disrespecting Saiyan warriors."

"No, no, I-"

The already unnatural quiet of the cafeteria had thickened into palpable silence. A terrifying understanding dawned on her.

No one was going to help her. No one would protest as they hauled her off, kicking and screaming. She was just an alien, chattel, a woman, and everyone was out for themselves, to oblige their masters...

One of the Saiyans knocked her tray from her grip, and they all laughed.

"I haven't even gotten to eat yet," one of them complained.

"We'll dine on Earthling tonight."

The Saiyans erupted with laughter, and as if their jeering wasn't humiliating enough, one of them grabbed her hair, shaking her. Her scalp blazed with pain, her eyes watering, her field of vision compromised by the mocking faces of Saiyans jerking to and fro.

One of them pressed up behind her as she sagged to the ground, his belt buckle digging into the back of her head, and he grabbed her ass through her lab coat, just inches away from the scouter in her pocket, sending her spiraling further into panic.

"We'll teach you to mess with a Saiyan's pride," one of them said, and her field of vision narrowed, a piercing deafness making it seem as if it were a chorus of them promising her death. It was an end she had had many nightmares about and yet had expected, but not like this, not in the middle of a cafeteria that smelled like sour milk and despair, with hundreds watching, not one of them brave enough or compassionate enough to interject.

"No," she heard herself say distantly.

They were still laughing. They didn't hear her, didn't want to hear her. Just use her.

"No" she said again, more firmly. "Over my dead body!"

She wanted to throw her hand over her mouth to stop the rage from spewing that would most definitely seal her fate, but she was past alarm and into the realm of frenzy.

Her face twisted. "There's no pride in bullying a person who can't fight back-"

One of the Saiyans slapped her across the mouth, and she fell back, catching herself painfully with her arm, jarring her, before clutching her jaw, which was already swelling. She tasted a smear of blood at her lip.

She was terrified and out of control, driven to an extreme she had been floating outside of for years. She didn't even recognize herself, as if she were on Earth again, watching someone else's drama unfold on the tv.

"I'm not afraid of you," she babbled, her voice raw with emotion. "There's nothing to admire about a couple of bullies trying to prove something to people they're keeping in chains-"

The leader's face had fallen as she spoke and then screwed up until his green aura burst around him, settling in his hand.

"Shut up, alien bitch!"

Bulma's eyes glittered in the emerald light of his ki, her mouth parting, to protest or plead for her life, she didn't know, and the light blazed around her, encapsulating her. Right before it was suddenly extinguished.

She blinked as her eyes adjusted, brows furrowing with bewilderment.

"She is right."

A deep, gravely voice echoed through the cafeteria and rolled right through her, traveling up her spine and settling at her neck. She shivered.

Bulma looked towards the sound of the voice. A few feet away, he stood, gold tipped, pearly white boots which traveled up his thick calves, and upwards, his defined thighs...his tail curled straight and neat around his waist, a slim white chest plate over his black suit, the Royal Saiyan Crest spread over his broad chest in red. His cape hung to his knees, affixed to its shoulders with gold pins. He was a vision of black, red and gold against the clinical lighting of the cafeteria.

To her bafflement, the Saiyans dropped to their knees and bowed their heads almost apologetically, and that's when Bulma noticed everyone else had already sunk to their knees in obeisance.

Bulma was already on her knees; all she could do was stare upwards at the Royal, licking the blood gathering at the corner of her lip.

"You are not Saiyans," the resonant voice continued. "A Saiyan first and foremost has pride, and I do not see any in the Saiyans in front of me."

"Your highness!" One of them cried out, earning a smack across the back of the head from his peer. He continued on recklessly. "We were trying to teach the wench a lesson in respect for Saiyans-"

"A real warrior does not need to flaunt his power to the weak. A Saiyan worthy of his salt seeks challenges from the most powerful. You've made yourself fools in front of an audience, and allowed a weakling to prove herself more Saiyan than you. I do not tolerate fools in my Army," he finished dangerously.

"My Lord, I'm sorry-" they began babbling, and the Royal cut them off with a swipe of his hand.

"You bring dishonor to yourselves. Do you defy me?" He snarled.

The men began shaking their hands frantically.

"I don't tolerate fools in my Army," the man reiterated, holding up two fingers, which lit with a mesmerizing blue fire, "but I especially do not tolerate fools."

Before she could blink, a flash of white hot light seared out from his fingers, and the heat of its proximity warmed her face as it decapitated the Saiyans cleanly. Sickeningly, their heads toppled off the stump of their necks almost comically, bloodless and cauterized. Bulma held back rising bile.

"You shall not tolerate it either." His voice rang out to the inhabitants of the cafeteria, shocking her from her daze as she stared in horror at the pile of limbs just a few feet away from her. The head of the Saiyan who had gripped her hair had swiveled in her direction, its lifeless, frightened eyes staring pleadingly in her direction.

For an instant, the man's eyes locked onto hers, and time stood still as his penetrative eyes regarded her. Against his bronze skin and jet black hair lay the gold braid fringe at his shoulder, denoting more than just his royal and military status.

Bulma caught her breath.

The Prince of Saiyans.

His gaze dipped down and lingered on the drop of blood at her lip before he turned, breaking the moment between them.

Just as soon as he moved, he was gone, and Bulma kneeled on the cold cafeteria floor, a pile of recently expired Saiyans to her right, her now cold, mashed...something...smeared across the floor to her left.

It was just her luck.

* * *

 

When she stepped into her office -her stomach grumbling with hunger, since her lunch had been splattered all over the cafeteria floor- her coworkers glanced at her uneasily, milling about and whispering to themselves. Uncertainly, she made her way to her cubicle, before being intercepted by her boss.

He gripped her arm and shook his head. "42019, we're having a visitor. A very important one. He's stopping by and wants to see the work on the Aisllee Project. Get prepared."

"Of course, sir," she murmured, and continued to her desk as he turned away, alerting other scientists to their visitor. Rifling through her file folder, picking through the documents on the project and inspecting them, before joining the others standing at attention by the wall.

It wasn't routine for a patron to visit the Science Wing. Bulma wondered what made this patron and the Aisllee project so important that one would be interested in personally inquiring on it. Bulma worried the scouter in her pocket, irritated with the shake down. She had more important things to do -finishing the blueprints and prototype for ChiChi, for instance- then stand here shaking in her boots like the others, waiting for some overgrown ape to grill her about a project that was far beyond his cognition. Her brows dipped into a little frown and she stared emptily at the wall, willing the day to be over.

As the last of the scientists joined rank, the door opened to the Wing, and a dozen Royal guards streamed in, setting up post around the office.

Bulma tried not to roll her eyes at them, when she once again came face to face with the Prince of Vegetasei, striding in behind the last Royal guard.

At first, he stared at the wall of scientists unseeing, his face a mask of indifference. Then his eyes met hers. She saw his nostrils flare, like a dog who had caught her scent, recognition clear on his face.

Bulma's heart stopped before exploding into a pitter patter of panic. Him. The Prince. He was the patron?! His scarlet cape swirled around his calves as he proceeded towards the line of scientists, the gold links and the Saiyan Royal insignia across his chest the same markings that had flashed in her vision as the Royal flew away that bittersweet night she had hacked the Military Wing. Was he...was he here for her? Did he know?

Her boss was explaining the project to the Prince now, clearly bootlicking, but Bulma didn't hear a word he was saying. Her adrenaline was causing her to tremble. Her boss was calling scientists out of the row one by one to give their accounts of the project, and Bulma turned her head towards the far wall to distract herself from hysteria.

The minutes passed, and he still hadn't blasted her. In fact, from her occasional, concerned glances his way, he looked quite bored and impatient, glaring at each scientist and only interacting with them by nodding curtly after they gave their reports.

Finally, her boss called her number, and Bulma took halting steps towards the Prince, feeling entirely self conscious of her gait, as though every movement was grounds to blow her into bits. She remembered the Saiyans dismembered bodies, the smell of singed hair and flesh. Her stomach rolled, and she thought she might puke. A small part of her hoped she would, just to get out of speaking to the Prince.

She finally stood in front of the Prince awkwardly, his eyes shifting from her coworker to her. His cold eyes searched hers before settling, once again, on her busted lip.

Her boss was speaking. The Prince, up close, had stupidly handsome features for being so awful a person. His face was broad, his features angular, his nose sharply defined and aristocratic. His suit fit tightly over his compact physique, and yet he wasn't excessively bulky. His tail was curled tightly around his waist, the downy hair glinting auburn in the fluorescent light, and Bulma could clearly see the muscles of his hips move as he shifted.

"42019," her boss snapped, and she looked up at him, with the feeling that wasn't the first time he had called her identifier. "Prince Vegeta would like to hear about your work with the Aisllee."

She cleared her throat, her eyes flicking back and forth between them. "Yes, of course." She cleared her throat again. "My position with the Aisllee has been, um, twofold-unpacking all the code encrypted in the ship's drive, which was damaged when it crash landed, but also scrutinizing and refining the Cold technology within it..."

Her voice drifted to a stop. The Prince was giving her an odd look that was quickly becoming angry.

"Go on," her boss snapped, and she spent less than a second wondering how he would make her pay for stuttering in front of the Prince before the Prince had a hold of her arm, his gloved grip almost painful as he drew her towards him.

He looked down into her eyes with deadly intent.

She couldn't help it.

She giggled nervously.

"I want to speak with this one in private," he demanded.

"Oh. Yes, of course," her boss sputtered. "There's an empty office over there-"

The Royal spun her around and marched her toward the room, pushing her in front of him at the small of her back before slamming the door shut.

His eyes never left hers, and boy, did he look furious.

"You're the little spy I made a deal with," he hissed, pinning her to the wall by her shoulder.

"What?" She squeaked. "Nooo, not me. There must be someone else you've mistaken me for-"

"I'd recognize that scent and those blue eyes anywhere," he snarled. "Your blithering only confirmed it. You're lucky I didn't scent you in the cafeteria earlier. I would have certainly killed you." The pressure increased at her shoulder, and she bit her lip to distract herself from the pain. "I'm lucky I didn't. Now I can talk to you...alone." His lips dragged upwards slightly. "Did they plant you here?" He issued roughly.

"Who?" She asked thinly.

"First Strike!" He snapped.

"No!" Her face flushed with anger, sweeping away any fear she had for the overbearing Prince. "I told you, I had nothing to do with them until recently." She gnashed her teeth. "Your Army invaded my planet eight years ago, kidnapped me, and forced me to push papers on your Kami-awful planet! I wouldn't choose be here even if First Strike offered me the largest walk-in closet in the universe!"

He glared at her murderously. "Are you reporting back to them on this project?"

"What? No! In fact, the only contact I've had with them since that night has been to hack their files. They haven't exactly kept their end of the deal," she admitted softly.

The Saiyan Prince barked with laughter. "Well, now, isn't that cute!"

Before she knew it, her palm was slapping against the Saiyan's smooth cheek, and for just an instant, she savored his surprised expression before being drove back into the wall hard enough to daze her.

"You have crossed the line, slave-"

They both heard the doorknob jiggle, and, to her utter surprise, a look of concern passed over the Prince's face before his eyes met hers and his hand released her neck, sliding upwards to cup her face with unforeseen gentleness.

And then he kissed her.

She was too shocked to respond. The Prince's lips were soft, and his whole body seeped warmth. Distantly, she heard the door open, and the Prince's tongue dove into her mouth, pressing against hers energetically. His thumb moved over the apple of her cheek and his body pressed fractionally into hers. He smelled like sun and a deeper musk, an undercurrent of unknown spice. His mouth was hot and surprisingly delicious. Her eyelids fluttered closed, but not before seeing him watch her under hooded lids, his eyelashes a full, rich ebony.

Carefully, without understanding the need for it, she pressed her own tongue against his and matched his rhythm.

Someone cleared their throat, and his kissing casually slowed to a stop, before he pulled away leisurely, staring at her intensely before glancing to the door.

"Yes?" His voice rumbled in his chest against her, and she found herself mindlessly leaning in to it.

"Forgive me, your highness, I heard the sounds of an altercation-"

"Leave a woman and man to their own," the Prince ordered.

"Yes, sir," the guard replied before shutting the door behind him.

The Prince sighed, his warm breath hitting her in the face, and she breathed it in.

"It is not customary for the heir to speak one on one with someone below their rank. There would be suspicion I must absolutely avoid should I be caught speaking to a scientist privately. I had to make it look like I was interested in only one thing from you," he explained, almost...bashfully.

"Then why did you pull me in here?" She asked, flabbergasted.

"Because I lost my temper," he growled.

"I can't tell if you're a man who does or doesn't know how to control his temper," she mused, smiling fractionally.

She didn't know what she was doing, talking to the Prince like this. Frankly she hadn't spoken to anyone on Vegetasei this much until the last year, when Gohan arrived.

"I am a man that loses his temper but is not usually impulsive," he warned testily. "Though they think me so, and it's better to keep feeding them that belief. Which is why we will meet tonight as planned, and you will tell me just what you meant when you said you found Cold parts on a Saiyan vessel, and about what you've found out from First Strike. Are we clear?" He hadn't pulled away yet, using his proximity to her as intimidation.

Impulsively -idiotically- her eyes narrowed at his tone. "Yes, master."

His eyes narrowed at her in return.

"You are so very, very lucky that you are worth more to me than anyone else on this Kami-awful planet at the moment." He stepped away and headed towards the door.

"Wait! What should I tell them you wanted of me? My boss will want to know what you inquired after..."

"Nothing," he replied matter-of-factly. "Just tell them I was good!" His lips twisted upward as he yanked the door open, he hovered in the doorway, looking over his shoulder at her gravely. "Change of plans. This could work out well for me. Meet me at my quarters tonight instead."

"What?!" She shrieked, but the door was closing between them.

"Prick," she hissed, crossing her arms over her chest, before sliding her fingers over her lips curiously.


	3. Chapter 3

Bulma put one foot in front of the other, making her way down the main hall, glancing at her radar discreetly and trying to stay out of the way of the bustling servants. The Royal Wing was just past the double doors that loomed a few hundred feet in front of her, and her radar was telling her that ki's lined the hallway beyond. Royal Guards. She gulped.

He wanted her to just...walk through the enormous, busy palace like she did it every day! And sashay down the hall like, like some...some lady of the night? Her heart was thumping inside her chest, her mouth was dry, her hands were clammy. Had he informed the guards? Would they kill her on the spot? Damnet, she had had enough of this feeling for one day!

The day had been impossibly long and draining; she was tired and hungry. She just wanted this over with so she could go home and help Gohan with his homework, indulging in her few, simple pleasures, before falling asleep.

The crowd began to clear the last dozen feet. Worrying her lip, she approached the guards at the door, who stood rigidly against the wall staring at her.

"State your business."

"I'm here to see the Prince?" She answered meekly. Would they believe her? All she wore were her scrubs under her lab coat, her shoulder length hair tied loosely at the nape of her neck. There was no persuading anyone she was here for...carnal pleasures. Gack. She hoped he knew what he was doing, because she wasn't convincing anybody.

"04192?"

She nodded weakly.

One of the guards opened the door for her. "You are expected."

She shuffled nervously between them and across the threshold. The door shut behind her heavily, startling her, and she glanced back and saw that one of the guards followed just a few steps behind her. He remained silent, watchful.

Acknowledging the escort with a sigh, she again put one foot in front of the other and made her way down the wide hall. It was dimly lit, the weight of the darkness and the oppressive quiet disarming. The hall was long, with no door in sight. The floor gleamed white alabaster, with bolts of red and black, her loafers slapping against it softly. Along the walls were murals, depicting giant apes howling at the moon, beating their breasts, traveling in hordes over a rocky, desert landscape. Lots of portraits of Oozaru battling among trees dripping with vines. Where were the forests on Vegetasei in which the Oozaru learned to climb and developed thumbs and tails? She considered the wonder of the shapeshifting Saiyans, whose ape forms were no longer bipedal, with a scientist's thoughtfulness. The style of the frescoes seemed outdated, and she wondered if maintaining the art and their history was why the hallways were so poorly lit. Bulma quickly dashed the thought away. It was impossible for a Saiyan to care about anything other than a fight, let alone art.

The guard surpassed her and came to a halt, and she came up short trying not to bump into the colossal warrior's behind. He rapped on the black wood door, which swiftly swung open, revealing the bored Saiyan Prince sans cape and armor.

"Oh, good. The woman's here. Well? Are you going to stand there staring at me or are you going to get undressed?"

Bulma's jaw dropped, but the Prince grabbed her by her shirt front and dragged her in before she could holler at him, slamming the door on the guard's face.

He left her there in the doorway, walking over to his desk where he hovered over some papers, as though they had occupied him before she had interrupted him.

She pointed her finger at him stiffly, seething, unable to form the words she needed to. He glanced her way. "These are the files on the Aisllee project. Why don't any of them mention Cold parts?"

She growled, strangling with emotion, feeling very much like a steaming kettle. Would this day ever stop challenging her dignity?

"Offworlder," he snapped, glaring. "Grow up. I have no intention of bedding you. Now come over here and do your damn job before I make you regret it." Seeing that she was a step away from exploding, he stared at her impatiently before smirking. "Are you upset that I have no desire to bed you?"

Bulma's rage stuttered to a stop. Mortified, she blushed. "Can we just get this over with?"

"Let's get to business."

He turned and faced her fully now. In his room, without his royal armor, he was no less intimidating. In fact, he seemed even more obviously predatory. Without his symbols of power, his concealing cape, the chest plate with the wide shoulders, it was evident now how much he moved like a hunter. He stood at the desk, glaring at the papers, clearly in a mood, and she unconsciously moved closer to him with curiosity. He didn't seem like he was accustomed to paperwork, staring at the papers like something in need of being slain.

"What are these?" She asked politely, gesturing at the papers spread out over the beautifully rendered, dark wood desk.

He growled a little. "These are the reports given to me on the Aisllee project. One set from my father's advisors, one set from your supervisor. Both contradicting the other." His head whipped toward hers. "Someone is hiding something from me. You said you saw Cold Parts on the fuselage? Explain yourself."

"Well, okay," she began, inching towards him to glance at the papers. He let her do so, although tensely. "Until now, this project has been pretty uninteresting. No one had acted as if anything were...controversial...about it. We were given the Aisllee remnants to identify why the ship had broken up in orbit, which my supervisor explained to you. I was given the task of modulating the wreckage, like I told you. Nothing really challenging about it." She complained. "While I was inspecting the wreckage, I noticed there were quite a few parts that were manufactured by the Cold Empire. Including the black box." Her voice softened as she noticed his face darken. "I thought nothing of it. I assumed there might be some economic agreement between you, although even I know your empire's are not on the best of terms..."

His face tightened.

"May I?" She pointed to the papers.

He nodded curtly.

She rifled though them, until she found the blueprints.

"Do you see this?" She asked softly. He nodded once. "This is the ship's source of propulsion. They were using keranite, because there was residue all over the engines."

He frowned, confused.

"I'm sorry, I don't know much about Saiyan exports, but I've heard that keranite is embargoed. It's extracted from Cold territories, and that's it. No Saiyan should have access to it," she continued. "Not only that, but we can assume they hadn't been stranded and forced to use it, if we were to explore other reasons the ship would be outfitted with Cold parts. Saiyan ships can't tolerate it, it doesn't properly explode in the cylinders, the ship just won't move with it. Which means the ship engine was deliberately outfitted for it."

"These men were on a simple purging mission, coordinates clearly mapped, in safe territory, with no behavioral problems on their record," Vegeta countered with irritation.

"Someone on the inside of your cabinet has made a deal with the Cold Empire," she breathed, putting everything together. "Am I getting closer to why you've brought me here?"

He set his cold black eyes on her.

He still didn't trust her. She didn't blame him. She didn't trust him, either.

"Explain to me how involved you are in First Strike."

"How do you know I'll be telling the truth?" She mused, lips turning upwards.

"It's quite obvious to me you have no idea what you're doing," he replied flatly. "I have no fear that with a little persuasion you will tell me what I want to know."

Her eyes widened.

He waited for her to quake, but instead, her heart shaped face turned stormy. "What is so unbelievable about me that you think I don't pose a threat?" She crossed her arms over her chest. "I seem to recall surprising you with a thousand volts of electricity not more than a week ago."

"And it did not prove successful."

"I wasn't expecting to run into the Saiyan Prince!"

A self satisfied smile tugged at his lips. "You got lucky."

She growled.

"I pulled your file." He told her abruptly. "You arrived here eight years ago aboard a shipping vessel directly from Earth with 4,000 others, many who've taken up service positions around the quadrant. You've been relegated to the Science Wing as an O-4 Operator and Maintainer ever since. The fact that you've remained while others have...disappeared...is noteworthy. Why make a deal with First Strike, when you've done so well...Unless you're a plant?"

He watched her expressive face transform again as she scowled at him deeply, regarding him with contempt. "Have you no concept of freedom? Are you really so removed from the life of your Empire's laborers that you can't understand why someone would want to leave the drudgery of enslavement and the whims of those who murdered their family?"

His face darkened. "Pathetic. You are not the only one who has to be somewhere and do something they don't want to."

"You live in splendor," she hissed, "while the rest of us break our backs to keep this Empire alive. It is not the same thing."

He leaned in, chest heaving. "Do you have a death wish? Do not presume I will endure your smart mouth simply because I am in need of an informant. I don't need your smart mouth anymore than I need a headache."

His breath hit her in the face, and she clenched her jaw before poking him in the chest, earning a scary rumbling.

"Now who is challenging someone beneath them?"

To her surprise, his face fell, and he took a step backwards.

Before she could gloat or reason out his reaction, there was a knock on the door.

"Get on the bed," he snapped at her, and made his way leisurely across the room to open the door. Bulma moved to sit rigidly with crossed legs on his bed and watched a servant bow deeply in the doorway, before wheeling in a tray. The aroma of food hit her, and she tried ignoring the answering pang in her belly.

"Get out," the Prince snapped at the servant, and the servant slinked out of the room.

The Prince picked up the covers of the silver trays, eyeing the food, before his eyes flicked over at her. "I tell you to get on the bed so that you can look well ravished," he drawled, before placing the plates on his desk, "and you're sitting over there like you're ready to take an exam. Now tell me. What have you learned from First Strike?"

The succulent aroma of steak was causing her mouth to water, and her eyes roamed over the small feast in front of him with intensity. "Hm?" She glanced back and he caught her licking her lips.

His eyes narrowed. "Get your eyes off my food."

Her eyes widened at his defensiveness. "I wouldn't be so hungry had my lunch not been smeared across the floor by some Saiyan brute!"

"Yeah, well, you can go fill your big mouth once we're done here, because the Prince of Saiyans does not share with commoners."

She didn't know whether to be furious or humiliated. "I don't get an evening meal. It's proscribed."

His brows dipped in confusion as he pulled a piece of steak off his fork with his teeth. She quickly decided she liked the way he looked when he was puzzling something out; it was a cross between a kind of cute vulnerability and a marked interest in solving a puzzle. "What do you mean?" His slight royal enunciation laced his words almost imperceptibly.

"I mean, I won't be be eating anything until tomorrow afternoon. We're allowed only one meal a day, at lunch chow." She turned away, embarrassed, and her hands fluttered in the air, shooing the topic away. She sighed. "I'm not a First Strike spy. I'm just a woman held against her will looking to live in safety, freely, and First Strike made me a deal. There's really no more to it than that. And you should believe me. The only people I've talked to since I arrived here besides First Strike and my superiors are the Son family, and one of them is confined in my room and the others are in the realm of the Heaven with the Kai's preparing for a war. So they don't have time to chat," she bemoaned.

It was like someone flicked a light switch on them at the same time. Their eyes met; Bulma's eyes widened and she threw her hand over her mouth. Vegeta's eyes became predatory as they zeroed in on her.

"What did you say?" He crooned.

She instinctively backed up, her oxfords finding purchase on the full red carpet as she stumbled from his study area onto his bed, the backs of her knees hitting the wood chest at the foot.

The Prince seethed down at her, his gloved fists balled at his waist. She had no idea she could be so scared. Enduring the Prince's wrath was confronting death, like uncontrollably losing purchase at the edge of an abyss.

"What are you hiding?" He bellowed.

"Heh heh," Bulma tittered, as she realized her shoulders were pressed against his massive headboard and there was nowhere else to go. "You misunderstood me. Who knows what I was talking about. I don't know what I was talking about! It's nothing, really!"

"Shut up," he hollered, "and tell me."

"You can't have it both ways!" She yelled stupidly.

Suddenly the Prince's ki burst around him, a thick sapphire vortex, the violent energy ruffling his spiky locks, causing them to twitch and sway.

"You have one second to tell me before you're stardust."

"My best friend Goku is a Super Saiyan and he's going to come to Vegetasei to purge the Elites!" She shrieked, her own hair whipping around her as she grit her teeth at the hurricane of dark energy ripping throughout the room.

"What?" The Prince cried incredulously, his ki swiftly diminishing.

He gave her an utterly baffled face, before growing a slanted grin. "A Super Saiyan. There's only one Super Saiyan in this universe," he cajoled, chuckling, "and that's me."

"You can go Super Saiyan, too?"

He glanced away, crossing his arms and sniffing. "You misheard me. I am the only one in the universe powerful enough to be the Legendary."

She gave him a sideways look. "Tell me, does the Legend tell of a blonde haired, green eyed Saiyan warrior with unprecedented strength?"

Vegeta just stared at her.

"Yep, that sounds just like Goku."

"You're telling me there's another Saiyan out there who can go Super Saiyan?" He asked belligerently. "Where is he? Why don't I know about him? What kind of game are you playing?" He hoisted her by the shirt, shaking her against the pillows, pinning her there with his weight. "Tell me everything and I might make your death a little cleaner."

How many times was she going to do this today?

The energy around him expanded outwards again, less violently and more precise, and he held up his hand, dazzling bright with an energy beyond her comprehension. Death followed the Prince like a shadow, and all she could think is she didn't think it was fair for her to go like this.

She grabbed his fist with both hands, the hand that held her life or death. She looked up into his face pleadingly. "Give me a minute to explain."

The Prince regarded her touch with wary surprise. She waited for his response with anguished eyes.

His ki finally died down, until their fighting faces were lit only by lamp light.

"I want you to promise me you won't hurt us once I tell you. I want you to promise me safe passage," she was surprised to hear herself say.

"How dare you make demands to me after I spare your life," the Prince wondered bellicosely.

"I'm not asking for much," she explained. "We have no home waiting for us should our plans even work, just a planet that's been cleared of life. All we'd really have is the right to refuse to play slave for the institution that destroyed our planet and our families. I don't really have a choice but to help you or die," she implored. "So I have to give the Saiyan Prince an ultimatum. You don't get anything from me otherwise. And your Empire hinges on it," she finished, trying her best to sound threatening.

He had bared his teeth at her by this point, his eyeteeth gleaming in the soft light. "You are insane," he grit.

She was still gripping his fisted hand. "I will tell you everything I know, and you can have your Empire, and you can have your war, and I won't bother you anymore. It's a win-win."

"Your planet is gone. It's been blown to bits by the Colds over a territory dispute. You have nowhere else to go."

Her face turned ashy.

He had hoped to relish her horror at the news, to regain his control by exploiting her emotions, but as he absorbed her crestfallen look he felt...guilty.

"It's...completely gone?"

All he could do was watch her.

She whipped her head to the side to hide her flickering emotions. In a thick voice, she continued the negotiation. "Just send me somewhere safe. Somewhere nice to look at. I just want to not be bothered anymore." After a few sniffles, she turned back to him, face set, eyes watery. She dropped her grip on his hand, which he felt fleeting disappointment about.

He stood, stepping backward, giving them space. She stood, smoothing her hair and adjusting her lab coat. It was ironically more awkward than pretending to be bedding each other. He watched her cross her arms over her chest a little wearily, looking worn and washed out in the gray scrubs of her work attire. Her hair had mostly come loose from the tie in their struggle. She stood straight, awaiting his response without much hope from under tired lids.

Finally, he agreed. "You will tell me everything. And for the duration of your stay on Vegetasei, you will stay here, in my room, so you cannot inform anyone."

He thought she didn't have anything left to give, but she surprised him.

Her face contorted. "What?! You're just going to lock me up here?"

"You will not exist anymore. You will be gone. Erased. Dead, to everyone else. You will give me all the information you know, and more, if I request it." She endured the onslaught, grimacing. "You will be quarantined in here until I confirm everything you say and this war has been taken care of. If you're found to be honest once I take care of this problem, you will have earned your freedom. I will promise you safe passage to wherever. If you are deceiving me, well," he gave her a sinful smile, "I will punish you. Saiyan style...Public torture..."

He watched her face.

"Okay," she whispered.

"Either way, I win." He promised sinisterly.

No longer have to go into work? That can't be so bad, she tried telling herself.

She nodded. "But we have to get Gohan."

"Go-han?" He pronounced the word uncertainly.

"Yes. Goku's son. He lives with me while Goku trains with the Kai's."

The Prince looked contemplative. "His son is Saiyan? Is he a rebel?"

"Goku grew up with me on Earth. He's married to ChiChi, who is from Earth like I am. Gohan is half Saiyan, and no, they are not rebels. Not unless you count being unappreciative of your world being purged rebellious behavior," she replied flatly, watching him askant.

"Then let's get this over with. Do you have your toy?"

"My toy?"

"The one that let you sneak around my palace."

"Yes. But, how about this?" She pulled something tentatively from her lab coat, holding it out to him, the eyepiece with the green lens which she had created for Goku so that he would have some tablet for sensing the ki's around him.

She flicked it open and set it over her eye, holding the piece steady as it scrolled through a wealth of information about the outside world before finding its target, narrowing on the prince and prompting her with a number.

"Oh. Wow." She looked at him with wide eyes, one obscured by opaque plastic. "No wonder I couldn't detect you in the hand held scouter." He was frowning at her, and she plucked it off her face and handed it to him. "It detects power levels. My other radar was disadvantaged because it couldn't detect strong ki's. Difference in materials, I suppose. This one will read any ki." His hand closed around it, and he peered at it suspiciously before fitting it over face. She reached up and reset it, fingers brushing his face, then stepping away so he could get a good read on her, his cheek still tingling from their contact. She heard the chirp which meant she had been targeted, and he smirked. "Just as I thought," his dark eyes lit up with playful wrath. "Pathetic."

She smirked back at him. "Yeah, well, no one said you had to be strong to have the advantage. You can be smart, too." She winked at him.

He focused as the scouter registered dozens of ki's, including the guards outside, and many more. "What are its proximate limits?"

"Half a mile. That's as good as I can do. I am stealing this stuff from leftover parts in the tool room, you know."

He handed it back to her, giving her a patronizing glare."And you are building this tech why? You said yourself you're not a fighter."

"For Goku. He...has plans to come here. To take care of some business."

The uncomfortable silence settled around them again. The Prince looked at her with deadly intent. "If he is coming to kill me, he won't leave alive."

Bulma shook his head, looking at him tentatively. "He...has plans to restore balance to the universe. First the Saiyan Elites...and then the Colds."

She squirmed under his consideration.

"Why the Elites?" He asked slowly.

"I don't think you'd understand." She crisply replied.

"Try me," he growled.

"Let me explain it to you like you're five, then," she snapped. "Because they're bad. Because they destroy people's lives, their homes, their planets. They enslave and kill them with no motivation except an empty gesture of strength. It's genocide on a massive scale, this competition between the Saiyans and the Colds for expansion and profit, and no one is brave enough to tell you...them...to stop. Well, now there is."

"Have you heard of the Legend?" He asked her briskly. He stepped closer to her. "Do you know why the Gods created the Super Saiyan, the Saiyan with enormous recesses of power? Because he is the adjudicate. He crops up every thousand years from between Heaven and Hell to restore balance to a people who were given over their fair share of everyday strength. He reaps what others have sewn," he told her closely, "and he measures your worth by that which you have already harvested. He is prescient, sent to remind Saiyans that Otherness exists inside them and they are not pure. He is the Reaper of Saiyans, and he is the Purger from Purgatory. Do you see now?" He grabbed her chin, staring into her eyes with a taut face and stormy eyes. "Your friend may be a Super Saiyan, but I am the Legendary. I will purge those rancid Elites and wretched advisors from this realm. I will remake the rules. I will take back my kingdom, not some intergalactic peacekeepers. Me."

They stared at each other, inches away from the other, unblinking. "I want them gone. And you're going to help me do it. Do you understand now? My way."

"I won't do anything that jeopardizes my friend's lives," she resisted, her head held still in his hand.

"You have a strength and smarts that is absent from many of my people," he mused. "Would that they were more like you."

Her eyes widened.

"Just less puny, and with absolutely none of your ridiculous coloring," he sniffed, releasing her.

Her eyes narrowed.

"I thought you were the, the Dark Prince." To say his name is to summon the man. And here he was. "You're...you're chaos and destruction, embodied. Why would you want peace?"

He jerked the breast plate over his head, attaching his cape to the shoulder plates with military precision. "I didn't say I wanted peace." He smiled cruelly and strode back over to her. "I just want to remind my people of their responsibility to our tradition."

"This is a power play," she commented. Somehow, she was disappointed.

"This is not a game of power," he snarled, pushing open the paper door balcony, cool night air hitting them. "Because then, I would win. This is a battle of wits. Put the scouter on. Is their anyone in our path?"

She fit it on, squinting into it. "Two over the walls, three in the garden."

Without warning, he grabbed her and hopped over the ledge, and she stifled a scream, throwing her arms round his neck tightly. He sprinted down the parapet, his footsteps soft, and then jumped to a balcony on the opposite side of the courtyard.

"One over there," Bulma warned him, pointing to the brush. The Prince sidled to the right, feet finding purchase on the shallow stones of the palace walls, his ki ever so lightly flaring to steady him, and hopped gracefully over a guard's head, landing them in a tree and earning a smattering of cursing from Bulma.

"In front of you," she warned, the emerald screen alerting her, and he stood still against the tree trunk amid the thick foliage, both holding their breath in the darkness while a guard passed. When she motioned they were all clear, he flew them in low to the Science Wing.

Outside, in the hedges, he put her down, and she worked to regain her balance.

"How many?" He asked.

"None," she answered, cracking open a power box on the wall and mashing buttons.

"There are no guards in the Science Wing?"

"They turn off the power, so we're locked in there. They don't believe we're capable of insurrection." The door slid open quietly, revealing a dark hall and stairs beyond. The moonlight from Vegetasei's two moons stretched toward the staircase before stalling. Vegetasei boasted three moons total, but its third moon appeared only once every eighty years, accompanied by just the right Blutz waves to turn them all into living terrors. At the foot of the stairs, she turned suddenly to the Prince.

"Tell me," she confronted him in the darkness and shadows. "When the Elites have been expunged, will you still be treating off worlders like dirt?" She proceeded again down the stairs in front of him, glancing behind her.

He narrowed his eyes at her. "It's not my fault you were too weak to resist us. The strong survive, while the weak-"

"Spare me your Nietzsche and social Darwinisms." Her face hardened as they descended in near total darkness. "Just because you're physically able to overpower us does not mean you have the right to. That's the point."

"Like hell it doesn't," he snarled, only a step behind her.

"Oh really?" She mused. "Then because I am smarter than you, does that mean I should just leave you here in the dark in a strange place, because I can, hm?"

"You are not smarter than me," he grit out, a hair's breadth away from spitting.

She grabbed his wrist, pulling him into a doorway, popping open a box of wires.

"You're awfully cute when you get defensive."

A door popped open, leaving the Prince stuttering, face warming, before he was dragged inside. The lights flicked on, and Gohan stood in his sweats, holding a ball of ki uncertainly.

"It's just me," Bulma assured him, smiling.

Gohan glanced at the very dangerous looking Saiyan at her side.

"Oh. Of course! Gohan, this is...the Prince. Of Saiyans." She looked between them. "He's safe." Her mouth drew into a little frown as she doubted for a moment whether to classify him as 'safe.'

"Offworlder, are you addled? Safe is the last word I would use to describe me," he snarled.

"Yeah, well, I guess you're right. How about benign? Like an annoying tumor that hasn't been surgically excised yet?" She smiled sweetly.

The Prince glowered at her, and Gohan glanced uncomfortably between them.

"Hu-hullo," he finally greeted, bowing, diffusing the tension briefly.

Bulma watched him proudly. She was going to have to mention to ChiChi that her prodigal son hadn't forgotten his manners around royalty.

"Prince..." She blinked, and then turned to him expectantly.

He looked sideways. "Vegeta," he grumped.

"Prince Vegeta, this is Gohan. Goku's son. And I am…well, you know who I am. 04192." She cleared her throat.

He looked at her with one elegantly raised eyebrow. "Don't you have another name...One that isn't such a mouthful?"

"Bulma," she said unfamiliarly, frowning. "My real name is Bulma."

"Bulma," he said, without thought.

She nodded, and then glanced around the small room with disappointment. "Well, this is where we live." They had stepped out of the narrow doorway and into the living room, which held a couch with a crisply folded blanket and pillow, a small table with two chairs, and a pile of computer parts and machinery. The kitchen was just a bit further in, in the far corner of the living room. It was small, with an arms width of counter space, one stove coil and a narrow sink. Altogether, the room was about ten feet long. To the right was a bedroom, holding a messy, unmade bed and a small desk with a computer, with no room in between. One had to climb over the bed to get out the door, or sit on the bed to use the computer.

"They shut down our power at night to seal us in to prevent us from...I don't know, mayhem?...but I have it rigged so that we have our own power generator." She gave him a small smile, which deflated quickly. To think that she was sharing all her secrets with the Empire's darling. "We don't really have anything to bring with us, except our clothes and our computer."

"Where are we going?" Gohan asked with concern.

"The Prince will be...keeping us, until your Father arrives. That way we can stay safe." She was lying through her teeth.

Gohan looked at her uncertainly. "I'm not sure my mother would agree to that," he informed her, not rudely. Kami bless his heart, Bulma lamented. He is still so good in a world so bad.

"I know, sweetheart, but I don't think we really have a choice." The two shared a look.

At her concerned but firm insistence, he nodded. "We will have to tell her soon, then."

The apartment smelled stale, like a basement, and the only thing the dim lamp revealed was the dull linoleum and threadbare furniture. She wondered if the Prince had ever been somewhere so dingy and small. He looked very out of place, and too big to fit, although he was holding himself gracefully enough.

"Grab it and let's go," the Prince demanded, his voice roughened with suppressed emotion.

The Prince refused to fly them back to his room. He demanded that the two Earthlings walk but insisted that they would be safe. Sure enough, they ran into no trouble sneaking around uncertainly in the dark, the computer in Gohan's arms and their clothes clutched to her chest like they were a couple of looters with poor taste. Honestly, she was a little relieved to leave the hole she had had to call home for the last decade. Perhaps it was just because she was so tired. The day had been so long, and she was feeling numb and silly, as evidenced by the stupid way she kept finding herself mooning at the Prince's back.

Once they stood below his balcony, Gohan flew up and over the balcony and landed lightly, turning towards Bulma. As she was piecing together just how she would climb up there and whether or not she should yell at Gohan to put the damned computer down and help her, the Prince had grabbed her at the waist and leapt up. She clutched the clothes to her chest and squealed. He let her go carelessly once their feet touched ground and he strode into the room, opening a set of doors she hadn't noticed prior.

Gohan and Bulma peeked inside. It was an expansive sitting room, endless wood flooring and furniture, gold fixtures and and high pile rugs, surrounding murals of battling Oozaru. Bulma and Gohan stood still, mouths parted.

"Trying to catch flies?" The Prince drawled as he strode past them, turning on a lamp. "This is where you will remain until we can take care of our little problem."

"Why are you helping us?" Gohan interjected. "How do you know we're not going to hurt you or something?"

"Look, kid," the Prince snarled, "you couldn't hurt me if you tried. I'm letting you stay here because, frankly, you are harmless. The both of you." He sent Bulma a look that had her sneering back at him. "Although I have my eye on you."

"That's more like it." She placed their clothes on the sitting room nightstand and rested her hands on her hips. "Get the computer set up and we'll call your Mom," she told Gohan.

"Do you have a bathroom?" She asked the Prince. To her delight, a blush grazed his cheeks slightly. He grumbled and stomped across the room, where he slammed open the door. Bulma approached, her side grazing his as she slipped past, and he clenched his teeth at the contact.

She took in the lavishly large bathroom. "Wow," she breathed, looking over the gold and platinum fixtures, the marble toilet, the luxurious shower and claw footed tub. Suddenly, her heart was pounding, and she swallowed, before backing up into the Prince and looking at him with embarrassment. "I'm sorry," she breathed. "I can’t—"

He reached out and snatched her arm as she went to escape, his own throat tightening with alarm.

"Can't what?" He growled, looking her over. "Where are you going? What are you hiding—“

"I'm sorry, it's just—“ she wiped her palms on her hips, "it's just, I haven't been anywhere this...nice...for years. It's kind of unsettling." She smiled weakly, trembling, and looked the other way.

His brows dipped into a deep frown, before their eyes met. They stood like that for a moment, before his eyes slid downward and away. "The towels are in the cabinet. The shower is touch activated."

He was still holding her arm. "Afterwards you may eat my leftovers." He let her go reluctantly, not meeting her gaze.

"Thank you," she murmured. "I promise we won't be a bother."

"You better not, or I will incinerate you both." He seeped menace, and yet, she had the feeling he was trying his best to be polite.

She put a tentative hand on his forearm, and he tensed, but didn't remove it. "Why are you doing this, really? I can't believe the Right Hand of Darkness would so easily take in an alien and an orphan."

Once again, he looked down at her lips, where she was bruised and swollen, a crack dried closed with blood.

She gazed at him with unwavering, deep blue eyes.

He moved in closer, until he was near enough to feel her breath on his face, and she tensed.

"Because," he breathed, peering down into her eyes, "have you ever wanted something so bad you could taste it?"

Her breath caught, and childishly, thoughtlessly, she nodded.

He came in even closer, his lips brushing her ear, his smooth cheek grazing her own.

"I want to challenge and defeat your Super Saiyan."

His breath curled around her ear, and she shivered, before he left her there.


	4. Chapter 4

ChiChi had had nothing nice to say about Bulma and Gohan's pact with the Prince, and Bulma couldn't blame her. ChiChi and Goku's every moment was controlled by the urgency to restore balance to the universe, while Bulma's newest patron—not just an Elite, but the Prince himself—likely reminded ChiChi of a time on Earth when Bulma was a bit more...reckless. Bulma might as well have done this all deliberately, the way ChiChi was reacting.

"Are you crazy?!" ChiChi had shrieked, causing them all to grimace, and Gohan's face to droop.

The Prince poked his head around the corner with wide eyes. Bulma glanced between the Prince and ChiChi and giggled nervously, attempting to shrug as though it had all just been a zany mishap.

Then Bulma pressed her face to the screen and glowered. "Look," she whispered furiously, "this is as good as it gets." She glanced up at the Prince, who was now standing at the door with his arms crossed, watching her with his depthless black eyes. "You do what you have to do, we do what we have to do. Yes, we don't have a whole lot of options this way, but we didn't before, either. At least now we have some measure of protection."

"And you're going morally bankrupt to pay him for it!" ChiChi hollered, and Gohan and Bulma's shoulders sunk even lower.

All of a sudden the Prince was hoisting the laptop up from the bed and turning it to face him. Bulma and Gohan's jaws went slack as the Prince and ChiChi were suddenly face to face. To ChiChi's credit, her initial shock was quickly replaced by a firm scowl at the man that took up her screen.

His face was blank, controlled, save for the way his brows pulled at the other in chronic disapproval of everything. "This is the Prince of all Saiyans. If I find that there is any duplicity in your agents, I will kill them both," he assured her matter-of-factly. "Tell the Super Saiyan I look forward to receiving him. Once our task is done, he will have to answer to me." Vegeta ended the call simply by ripping the wires from the back and flinging the laptop to the floor.

Bulma rushed over and gathered it in her arms. "Is that how you were taught to turn computers off?" She complained, sitting it gently on the nightstand.

The Prince had already left the room, though he left their double doors open, his silent, sparse sitting room in their view like a mirror reflecting their helplessness.

"I don't understand, Bulma," Gohan said softly, winding his fingers around each other. Bulma cast him a look of concern and settled on the bed beside him, sending one more annoyed glance at the doorway. "Why would he be so hospitable? Why stick his neck out for us?"

"He has bigger fish to fry, I think," she whispered uneasily, chewing the thought over. ChiChi's concern wasn't misplaced, and they both knew it. A small frown knit as she gazed into her lap. "He means to use us. He's like all the rest of them. He doesn't believe we're any threat."

Gohan turned to look at her with wide eyes. "Are we?"

Bulma met his gaze, mouth turned down at the corners. There were slight lines showing at the corners of her mouth and between her brows that weren't there in his father's photo of her from ten years ago, her arm thrown around his Dad and a wide smile. No laugh lines, no crow's feet on this woman. Just the washed out, gaunt face of a person who had fought to stay alive for a decade.

Her hand rubbed his back protectively. "We can't out power him, that's for sure. I don't know...I don't know that I particularly want to outwit him, either." They glanced at the doorway. No shadow lurked in its threshold; just the empty red room, staring back at them. "We're important to him right now. We're safe as long as we remain that way." She leaned her head against his, drawing him in close to squeeze him to her side. Little Gohan, only eleven, too small to be taken to the no-mans-land where his father prepared to be a tool of war, but too kind to ever hold it against anyone.

"When I was your age," she said, turning the mood as she leaned back against the pillows and stared at the ceiling with a faint smile, "I was always outside, climbing trees, catching fireflies, playing tag with the kids in my neighborhood. Or in my father's lab," she amended with a quirk at the corner of her lips, "climbing all over his prototypes, turning wrenches with him. There wasn't a thing I worried about, except maybe going to the mall on a Friday night." She twirled a lock of his hair in her fingers. It was getting shaggy now. She aught to trim it, but scientists weren't allowed to have scissors. The Empire didn't like it when its free labor ended its life.

Gohan tentatively took the bait. "What was the Earth like, then?"

"Blue sky, pure cerulean blue. One yellow sun, one moon. And seasons, not just this eternal heat. Sometimes it snowed, sometimes it stormed. There were deserts, but also jungles, and marshes, and fields, and cities, and ice and snow that went on for miles." She raised her eyes to the ceiling dreamily. "I could hop on a motorbike, tell my folks I'd be back in time for dinner, and drive anywhere I wanted to in the world."

"It won't be like that again, though, will it?"

Bulma frowned testily at the ceiling. Her hand fell from his hair disheartedly. "Earth is gone, Gohan, and the dragon balls with it. If we can do as the Prince says, we'll have the chance to start again somewhere new, somewhere free and safe. And that sounds heavenly." Her eyes drifted to his, daring him to complain. Like the good kid he was, he didn't, just nodded softly.

She sighed. "Get some sleep, kiddo." She dragged herself out of the bed, pulling the blankets over him. "Your Mom will come around. Just give her some time to swallow the news." She pulled the fine chain that turned out the light. "And before you know it, Goku will be here to fix everything." A ghost of a smile graced her face in the dark.

She slipped quietly through the Prince's sitting room and found him standing at the window, his arms behind his back with military ease. The curtains rippled gently in the breeze, winding about his strong thighs.

She approached slowly, making sure he knew she was there. He didn't budge, just stood stolidly, his silhouette melding with the black sky and stars before him.

"It will never be the same," he finally said, unmoving.

Her eyes drifted to the stars beyond. "I know," she conceded regretfully.

"I have eradicated planets like yours." His face angled towards hers, shadowed in the low lamp light. "Do you not mean to make me pay for it?"

His voice was low, inflexible. He did not think she could. He wondered if she was still ballsy enough to try.

She frowned deeply, meeting his dark, indecipherable gaze. "If I could, I would, you bet." She sighed with contempt. "But I'm just a human. I have no power here. The Empires draw the world as they desire, and I have to make myself fit it."

"There is nothing wrong with power," he interjected cooly. "Not if it's earned."

"But who deserves power?" She countered. "And what about the people who are hurt when you use it?"

His face turned again to the outside world. "Power exists. It has always been. It's integral to life itself. There is no world that does not have someone who seeks to use it, and a social hierarchy that illuminates the power of power itself."

"People have the right to live peacefully."

"It is not for peace I play this game. Let's be clear." He turned his whole body toward her this time, his arms folding over his chest. "It's power, it's dominance, it's mastery. It's the thrill of testing my strength. It's the profound satisfaction I feel to my very bones when I win." She found it hard to breathe around him sometimes. For having a much more human stature than other Saiyans, he took up so much space. "And don't you, too, seek power? Power over me, to get what you want? And your Super Saiyan. Even now, he trains to become more powerful."

She scoffed defensively. "We wouldn't act this way if it wasn't the only way left to survive."

"Power is the universal language," he said dismissively. "The question is, 'who deserves power?'"

He must have wanted to hear her answer, though, because while he seemed to have his own thoughts on the matter, he waited for hers. She searched his face. Why would he care how she felt about it?

"A person deserves power if they're incapable of being swayed by it. Those who use it to help others," she responded quietly, "and not those whom others are stepping stones to their own desires."

"You are a stepping stone," he reminded her cruelly. "I am helping myself by using you."

"Yes," she agreed bitterly. "At least this way I get something out of it."

"You, too, play the game of power. And you have dared to play it with me. Of all people." The corner of his lip curled at her expense.

"I guess I'm no better than you, then." She looked up at him under a scowl.

The breeze ruffled his hair. "We all play the game." He turned back toward the sky, measuring the space between he and the stars as if he wanted to measure the distance at that very moment. "It is only a matter of who plays it wisely. Even those who risk all and win cannot hold it for long without strategy."

"Why are you trying to argue with me?" She snapped. "You know we have different opinions on the matter, and I obviously can't change your mind."

He smiled then, a barbed thing, easy to get caught on, easy to wound. "To know how much of a danger you are to me."

She frowned, curiously. "I'm no danger to you."

"You're a woman with powerful friends and connections to an insurgency that is a plague on my empire." His dark eyes gripped hers. "You have snuck past Saiyan defenses in the Palace and are now holed up in my very quarters. And I am not to be cautious of you?"

She'd never thought of it like that. "I'm just 42019," she finally sighed. "I just want to go home."

"There is no such thing as home," he snapped. "Your home is dust, and mine...mine is gripped in a cold war, and even now the Senate seeks to either use me or silence me interminably. They hope I am dimwitted and impolitic, so that I may be controlled for their purposes. And while I have no desire to encourage them, I do not want them to know the deviations at the heart of it. The throne is mine: not the Elite's, not your Super Saiyan's, not the rebel's...Not even the gods."

She scowled, crossing her arms over her own chest and looking askant out the window. "Yeah, yeah," she muttered.

"I would have you tomorrow sniff out the motivations of First Strike. The Council and the Colds are plotting something, and First Strike has a hand in it. I will expect answers promptly when I return tomorrow evening at 1700." He watched her face go slack, her eyes compute the enormous task, maybe calculating the probability of escape. "You will not be going anywhere," he warned. "The guards have been notified to kill anything trying to come in or out of my rooms on sight."

He watched her face fall further with some satisfaction. "Now tell me," he urged silkily, "would you rather it be me or you with the power?"

She watched his jeering smirk with growing outrage.

Her mouth parted, but he interrupted. "You may have what is left of my dinner. Do not think to kill me in my sleep; I am a light sleeper." He sent her a contemptible smile and turned away from her then, pulling off his gloves and striding to the bathroom.

She fell into his study chair with a plop, hanging her head in her palm. She felt her eyes burn and a single tear hit her nose, and she sniffed angrily, dashing away any wayward tears.

The smell of steak was too overpowering, though, and she couldn't help turning toward it, and with barely a backwards glance at the closed bathroom door, grabbed it with both hands and shoved it into her mouth, chewing through her frustrated sniffles.

The cage remained. There was always a cage.

* * *

 

Bulma slept hard, though she hadn't thought it possible to sleep with a universal terror in the other room and with the events of the night turning over and over in her head. But she managed, and when she woke, Gohan was helping himself to a large platter of eggs. "Good morning, Bulma. The Prince let me have his leftover breakfast. All the meat was gone but there's still some toast in the sitting room. And there's plenty of eggs left."

She squinted at him, brushing the hair from her face with the flat of her hand. "Is he still here?"

Gohan shook his head. "He left awhile ago."

Her arm flopped over her eyes. "What time is it?"

"About 0500."

She grumbled. The one morning in ten years she got to sleep in and her body was so wired to wake up at 0500 lights-on that she couldn't sleep through it if she tried.

She grasped for some clothes and dragged her feet to the bathroom, closing the door groggily behind her. Her fingers slid against the on-off pad, and the shower heads began spraying, quickly steaming the glass doors. Bulma stepped into the shower, large enough to rival the size of her bedroom in the Science Wing. Her own shower had been just big enough to turn around in. She cursed the Prince's privilege under her breath. The marble was cool and smooth against her feet, and she hurried to find the shampoo before it hit her that this shower wouldn't turn off in five galactic minutes like her own. She exhaled heavily.

The hot water ran over the top of her head and she craned up to it, dragging her hands over her face and relaxing into the spray. Since no tyrannical princes threatened her life after a few minutes of using up the hot water, she took her time to enjoy it, breathing deeply and finding a stillness of mind that hadn't been present for far too long.

Stepping out of the shower, she grabbed at a thick towel and rubbed herself dry. She threw it haphazardly back over the rack and pulled on the high rise polyester panties, clipped on the stretched-out, pilled bra. Like her own, there was no mirror in this bathroom, and she was grateful of whatever Saiyans had against looking at themselves. She hadn't seen her reflection in ten years, and she had no intention of seeing it again at this point just to be depressed by it.

All she had to choose from was a work uniform and a single set of pajamas, and so she pulled on the coarse scrubs and lab coat and tied her oxfords. She ran her comb through her hair but left it down rebelliously, the ends blunt swaying damp against her shoulders.

Padding into the Prince's sitting room and relieved to see that he was, thank Kami, not present, she swiped the leftover toast, what remained of a whole mouth-watering loaf soaked in imported honeyed butter, and began the tedious task of setting up her computer. She had approximately eleven hours to hack First Strike and find the way in which they antagonized the Saiyan Empire, or else it was off with her head.

"I'll let you know if I need your help, kiddo." She addressed Gohan distractedly. "Why don't you get caught up on your calculus homework?" Gohan knew what she was implying: she'd need some time to herself to get this done. Used to Bulma's obsessive absorption while working on a project, he nodded and hopped off the bed.

He hoped the Prince didn't mind if he did homework in the sitting room. After all, Gohan was half-Saiyan, and even he could smell every person who had been in the Prince's quarters recently, like a lingering psychic residue. He didn't know if it was because Bulma wasn't Saiyan that it didn't bother the Prince that her scent was everywhere, even in his bed—Gohan didn't question it—but Saiyans were naturally competitive with each other. So Gohan, even while trying to give Bulma some berth to work, tried to make himself as inconspicuous as possible outside her door but as far away from Vegeta's room as he could manage.

Unless things got messy, he'd let Bulma handle the Prince.


	5. Chapter 5

"Strict orders, your highness. Today, and any day hereafter, until the King reverses his decision. We apologize." Both guards bent low to demonstrate their regret.

It must have been difficult for them to refuse their sworn heir to please the crown. Vegeta wanted to put a fist through both their faces.

The Prince didn't respond, simply pivoted on his heel and made his way back down the hall away from the tower before slipping into a recessed doorway.

He sunk his fist into the wall. "Why will he not see me?" He rasped.

Vegeta breathed in rapidly through his nose, painfully aware that he wasn't behind closed doors. He needed to get control of himself quickly. He did not need it getting around that he was desperate to be received by his father. Their might be talk that he sought power, and they might ask why, might decide that he must know of the plans against him, might make a move against him before he was ready. And despite the oaths the palace guards took to the Royal Family, Vegeta did not put it past them to be paid off by less-than-loyal Elites and Council members. Enemies, enemies everywhere, and he with no offensive other than an off-worlder with bright blue hair and a penchant for telling him "no."

His father had no good reason to keep his son at bay; that was obvious to he and everyone. Someone was trying to project a divide in the Royal House. When his father passed, he would be the only surviving member of House Vejitasei, and with him his House would either sink or swim. To hide the King away while the heir frolicked around the universe was only too easy a solution to weaken the Royal House, treasonous and sacrilegious as it was.

Vegeta pulled his fist from the wall and leaned his head against the cracked plaster, closing his eyes in thought. Or was his father still sound of mind without anyone the wiser? Had he retreated to his rooms to avoid the politicking? Had he refused to see Vegeta because he was not satisfied in some way with Vegeta's progress at the Borderlands? As it stood, the Council had reigned unchecked since his father's sudden seclusion four galactic years ago. Vegeta knew better than to believe that they'd only exerted power in the way the King would request it. There were too many legislative earmarks that funneled money away to nowhere, too much backdoor fundraising. Legally, the Council was only a piece of the architecture of Saiyan politics. Behind closed doors, with the Crown Heir light years away, they were all there was.

He had only done exactly as his father requested: be the Dark Lord of his Saiyan Empire, shepherding new planets and neutral planets alike to Saiyan territory in the increasingly hostile relationship with the Colds. His father's pride was the only damned reason he'd spent nearly half his life culling the Saiyan quadrant and beyond the Divide and into the Borderlands, picking and choosing planets to add to their Empire and sending the others to the Depths. Thirty two times his home planet had orbited Öngdala, their red giant, since he'd torn from his mother soaked in blood, and he had as much power now as he did as a mewling infant.

Kings trembled in front of him before he'd even managed a "hello." Vegeta put his fist one more time into the wall for good measure.

So why was he not able to speak to his own father? And if there was no King, just a wasting has-been, why was there no proposal from the Council to see him coronated?

* * *

 

It wasn't until they were startled by the front door closing that Bulma came up for air. Her head snapped to the doorway, where Gohan unfolded himself from a pile of books. Rather than the Prince, however, another, in the belted, loose gray top and wide legged bottoms of third class Saiyans, pushed a cart inside the Prince's bedroom. Both she and Gohan stiffened, breath skipping and heart slamming in her chest. But the Saiyan only pushed it further in, past the guest bedroom, through the sitting room and into the Prince's room, before he left the room without ever looking up. Once the door had closed, she and Gohan shared a wide eyed stare.

"It's food," he explained.

As soon as he said it, the smell of it hit her. She swallowed saliva. "It's not ours," she cautioned.

Gohan watched her. "Should that Saiyan have seen us? Are we supposed to hide?"

The Prince wouldn't have forgotten to tell the servants about them, would he? Or prime them for this scenario if he couldn't? "I don't know," she answered timidly. She glanced at her watch. 1658. "Elite's eat at 1700, I believe. That's his dinner then. Shouldn't he be here, then?"

The front door slammed against the wall in answer, causing them both to jump. They heard the thump of his boots down the hall before they saw him, and then he turned the corner into the sitting room, stalking toward them and before pointing at Bulma. She flinched as if struck.

"You will come with me."

The blood drained from her face.

Gohan jumped to his feet. "Where are you taking her?" Kami bless him, Bulma thought sadly. She was going to have a hard time giving him up when this whole thing had blown over. He was Son's kid through and through, even if he was missing the competitive streak.

Vegeta only sneered in Gohan's direction.

Bulma stood, trying not to tremble. "Did I...Did I do something wrong-"

"Let's go," he interrupted, striding to his bedroom. "Grab your ki finder."

Her eyes widened. "The radar?" She bent over her small of pile of possessions and plucked it from under her pajamas before trailing after him, trying to give Gohan a reassuring glance as she passed.

The Prince was standing at the window. "Ömulaya the third sun is setting now. Well enough to evade any guards in the dusk. Climb onto my back."

"Where are we going?" She asked tremulously.

"You don't get to ask the questions, insolent woman," he said roughly. "Get on before I take your device and leave you behind."

She tapped on the radar, watched it blink to life, the dots of registered bodies settling on the grid. There was she and Gohan, in the center, and beyond, dozens of others.

Then she stared at the Prince's back, trying to think of the most graceful way to climb on his back without losing her life with it. Her chest heaved as she tried not to panic. She'd had to touch him before, sure, but he'd never been explosively angry when she'd done it.

She was suddenly scooped up and swooped in the air, clutched in his arms as he took a running jump from his window and leaping from the balcony edge.

"Don't you get tired of scaring me?" She yelled in his ear, grasping his neck with one arm and the other hand with a white knuckled grip on the radar.

He only grunted in answer. He flew low toward the desert guyá trees in the center of the courtyard, their branches snaking up toward the sky with just enough brush at their tips to hide them. The Prince righted in the air just inches away from smacking into the tree and settled smoothly on one of its plump white branches.

"Which way are we headed?" She asked, frowning down at the radar with resolve.

His answer rumbled in his chest and against her side. "Just north of here. That tower, there, at the edge of the palace. So beyond that wall and through another courtyard. The roof slants away from the palace interior, so once we've breached the tower, we will not have to remain concealed."

She glanced up. The lone tower was silhouetted against the violet night sky. She looked back at the radar filling her hand. "There are four sentries posted in each corner of this courtyard, and eight in the other, if I've done my math right. These are the ki's inside the building there," she showed him, sliding her finger between two lines on the grid, "a guard posted every few meters inside. The tower itself..." She bit her lip. "This hasn't been rigged to show three dimensional depth. We'll have to get closer before I can give you an accurate reading-"

He was already heading north, hopping from tree to tree to avoid being seen, as his ki sparked against his skin in flight. Bulma tried not to break her teeth as she chomped down in fright. She liked it better when he just flew her somewhere.

After a precursory look around, the radar assuring them they were in a dead zone in the middle of two guards, Vegeta used as little ki as possible to boost his jump from the branch of a guyá and onto the roof.

Bulma had just a moment to appreciate the view. From a few stories high, the labyrinthine castle snaked outwards, home to several distinct desert gardens, before it simply ended where the desert began and stretched without end from all directions. The stars threaded through the clear dome of the sky, while the third sun, a white dwarf, inched towards the line of the horizon. Behind them stretched the ancient city of Vejitasei, home to the few ten thousand remaining on-world Saiyans. The domes of the Science Wing were one of many residences that shadowed the space port, glittering red and gold, from which pods occasionally plummeting and slingshotting out of sight.

"We can't be up here. There's nowhere to hide from anyone on the ground," he muttered, before he slid them down the roof, skating on the air to avoid noise. He dropped them over the side, giving her a second of pure terror, before pressing them up against the wall just below the ducting.

She wasn't going to apologize for pressing herself tight against him.

"Do you have a death wish?" She whispered furiously, glaring up at him.

That earned a small smirk. "On the contrary. Why? Do you?"

She grumbled, glancing over her radar. "One in each corner, one between each of them. North, northeast, east, southeast, and so on. One right below us. South." They both peered down. Sure enough, they could see the top of a head of black hair a few dozen meters from their feet. This courtyard boasted only a reflecting pool, bare of any other ornamentation. "There are no trees. What are you going to do?"

"Sneak."

Pressing them further to the stone, the Prince began moving them down the length of wall.

His hand felt hot against the backside of her knee. His chest tensed beneath her, his bicep flexing against her back as he inched down the wall, hidden in the shadows of the soffits. Soon they'd made it to the southwest corner, where they came to a stop to make sure they hadn't been seen, that no ki's were rushing around on the radar. She nodded, and they were off again.

"I wish I could help," she whispered. "Pull my own weight. I feel like a big baby," she complained, but not without lamenting how far things had come when Bulma Briefs griped about being held in a handsome man's arms.

His chin rested against the top of her head for a moment as he looked left, dodging the rain spout. "Me, too," he agreed, voice ripe with mirth.

Without thinking, she playfully rapped him with her knuckles in the chin.

Faster than she could blink, his hand had enclosed her fist, and he stared down at her with humorless eyes as she realized, with a sinking gut, her error.

"You're impudent," he finally said, releasing her hand. He creeped down the wall again. "How you have lasted this long on Vejitasei is beyond me."

Her heart was trying to sprint out of her chest. "Sorry," she apologized sheepishly. "I forgot you were a bad guy there for a second." She sighed. "I've survived because I don't take pride in my work," she replied forlornly, watching the courtyard move like clockwork around her. "If you want to get noticed, want to feel powerful because so much of your life is regulated and oppressed, oh, you'll get patronized." She stared up at him, his broad jaw above her leading sharply to a point. "You get patronized," she finished softly, "and you eventually wind up missing."

"The Elites have their own sins to account for," he responded, ducking under another rain spout and rolling them through the last corner. "They are spoiled, shameless, and without anything else to do than politick. That the Council has taken their cue from them..."

"I'd always thought Vejitasei a monarchy. Does the Council have a lot of sway, then?"

He looked at her suspiciously. "Fishing for information, are you?"

"No!" She piped, defensively. "It's just, Vejitasei presents such a strong face to everyone. The way everyone talks, the Elites and the Council have to answer to you and your father. ...Right?"

He tightened his grip on her as he sailed upright without warning, over the edge of the roof. Once hidden in the edge of the roof, he sat up, sitting her less than serendipitously on the tile beside him.

"I wish it were so," he finally grumbled. He settled beside her, leaning back on his palms. "Vejitasei is a monarchy, but it has it's own distinct traditions. Conventionally, we were divided into three: the Council to serve the future of Vejitasei, the Elites to sharehold the present, and the Royal bloodline to serve as a reminder of the past, the might of the Saiyans, their pride. Respecting the Council's guidance and the Elite's knowledge, the King is certain to execute an action with the fullest wisdom and brevity, and his will is absolute. Now the tradition is nothing but show, but quarreling among each other, and overreaching, I suspect not just from each other but to outside power. That tower," he nodded at the shadow looming just a dozen meters away, "is my father's residence. No one has seen him for four years, save his servants. Not even I. He lays on his deathbed, and here the rest of us remain, without a clear view of the future. If he had not sent me away to pacify the Colds, if he had prepared me to rule..." He draped an arm atop one of his knees, staring sightlessly at the tower. "I am now but an empty institution. The Council is swiftly becoming the empire's shadow government."

Bulma watched him speak with wide eyes, a smile teasing her lips. "Thanks for letting me know. First Strike appreciates it." She winked.

He turned to meet her gaze in the dark, the first moon, Möngdyla, reflected in her eyes.

He sniffed, seeming to catch his mistake. "You have a third class sense of humor." But the way he was clenching his jaw told her he'd felt he confided far too much.

In the moonlight, despite the too-handsome features of his face, he looked...human. In that moment, she sympathized with him. He may be the Right Hand of Darkness, his father the surrogate of this whole hellish operation, but he was just a man, and a man, if she guessed right, whose role in the Empire meant he had no one to confide in.

"You really care about this, huh?" At his sour look, she bumped her shoulder against his, smiling in commiseration. "But you're contradicting yourself, you know. You said last night that I have ties to too many outside powers. You know what I think? You don't think I'm a threat anymore." She crossed her legs, turning the radar mindlessly in her lap and watching him with a faint smile.

"I have nothing to fear from someone I completely control." His eyes slid to her beside him, dark, daring. "Besides, you are far more unlikeable than you are dangerous."

For the first time in ten years, she felt as if she were sitting next to an average, ordinary person. Away from the bustle of the palace, in a pool of moonlight, he was simply a man. And he was so close. She hadn't realized how intoxicating just talking with someone could be.

She wanted to feel what a human felt like again.

She knew it was a risk, but she took it anyway. As he sat there and grit his teeth, looking anywhere but at her and wondering how to recover his slip up without butchering his informant, she grabbed for his hand. He stiffened so rigidly that she froze, thinking he meant to hurl her off the roof. As another second passed and he had yet to protest, she threaded her fingers through his gloved hand, and squeezed, before jerking it back into her lap and blushing.

They stared forward for a long and awkward minute.

She cleared her throat. "Your father is in that tower," she finally asserted, "and we're going to go see him?"

"Yes," he managed curtly.

"Why not walk there? Why this slinking around in the night?"

"You ask too many questions," he snarled, standing and walking across the slate roof. Whenever his foot slipped, he simply righted himself with his ki.

Bulma went to stand but wobbled and fell to her knees. "Hey!" She called frantically. "You just going to leave me here?"

Evidently he'd thought of a suitable punishment, because he kept on walking.

She growled and crawled over the tile until her knees were thoroughly bruised, and she straightened, leaning forward to catch herself on her hands and catch up with him.

He was just under the shadow of the tower, looking up its length. Approaching him, she restrained herself from whipping him around and really giving him a piece of her mind. But she'd pushed his limits enough tonight, and no matter how convenient and rare an informant she might be, the Dark Prince wasn't known for his mercy.

She pushed the radar's plunger and it recalibrated. She frowned. "Are there stairs up the length of the tower?" She asked from behind him.

He didn't bother to glance back. "No. The only way to ascend the tower is traditionally by flight." His voice was soft and low.

"I suppose that would explain why there are no ki's registering inside the tower, except at the very top. Would any of the guard's have high power levels like you?"

He sniffed. "Absolutely not. Not even my father." His brows pulled together. "His energy should register on your device."

"Then three." She looked up at him. "Only three ki's at the top. The rest far below."

Without preamble he grabbed her around the waist and shot upward. She trusted him to hold on tightly enough- -just barely- -and focused instead on the window he was aiming for. He hugged the wall, keeping close to the black stone, which would hopefully absorb any blue sparks as he used the thinnest amount of ki he could to ascend. They were coming up fast in the Prince's usual fast-paced and devil-may-care style of attacking a problem, and rather than slow down, peek in, and assess the inside like she expected of the downcast man who she'd spoken to only minutes ago, the Prince kept barreling toward the open window, the details of the pane-less frame becoming clearer with every second. She let out a squeak, torn from her on the wind, and they surged through the open window. He tossed her to the side before she'd even had a chance to get a look around and she stumbled. Vegeta, too fast to register, sprinted toward an older woman folding towels in the corner of the room and slammed the side of his fist on her head. She crumpled in her chair. He pinwheeled and brought his knee up into the stomach of an older Saiyan who was plodding out of the bathroom and who never saw it coming. As he bent over in pain, the Prince's elbow slammed onto the crown of his head and he fell to the floor heavily, fingers twitching.

Bulma watched in horror.

Vegeta swept the room for any other unexpected guests. "Move the bodies into the bathroom," he ordered from across the room. "I do not want to chance them coming to and seeing me."

She picked her feet up heavily, stepping once, twice to the nearest body before stalling, gawking.

"Do as I say or you're of no use to me!"

Mouth closing on a few choice curses, she tentatively grabbed the shirt of the male Saiyan, trying to pull him back into the bathroom he'd just exited. He didn't budge. Her eyebrows slammed down around her angrily and she grabbed at the Saiyan's wrist, yanking back. What was with Saiyan muscle mass? She pulled again, heels backpedalling into the bathroom just as the Prince approached the bed. No lamps were lit save a single fire that burned to the right of the bed.

Bulma didn't know whether to apologize or relish it as she pushed the Saiyan's head out of the way of the bathroom door with her foot, and once the doorway was clear of body parts, she fell onto the toilet, breathing heavily. The woman was easier, lighter. She didn't see many Saiyan women, but they weren't as dense as the men she'd encountered, nor as tall. She managed to pull the woman into the bathroom without any hiccups until she tripped over the man's feet and fell onto her butt with a gush of air. She grumbled, struggling to stand up, and slammed the door indignantly behind her.

Her stomping came to a halt as she watched Vegeta sit delicately on the bed next to a figure. She approached, tentatively, not knowing whether or not he'd appreciate being ogled and settling instead to hovering at the edge of his vision.

She looked over the figure on the bed, lying prone on his back under the covers. The firelight flickered over their faces, and though she couldn't make out the King's features in the dark, she could see the same upwards flame of hair against the pillows, and a gold band fitted over his forehead, a single red ruby dripping from it against his brow. He took shallow breaths, his pallid face bruised around his closed eyes. The room was thick with incense.

"You must make me King," the Prince finally stated. Bulma's eyes widened. The King did not move as if he had heard.

Vegeta's voice was raw, uncontrolled. "You sent me to the edge of the universe while your most dangerous enemies surrounded you. You have put all of the Empire at jeopardy. And here you lie, weak, and silent, the same man who tore the flesh from my back when I was but a child for questioning your logic at the Battle of Sector Thirty." The Prince's fist curled at his side. "Now I am a man, with an Empire trembling at my feet, and I am powerless to stop it from imploding at its core." Bulma watched his brow twitch and tremble, squeeze his eyes shut. "You're a fool," he accused, standing with his fists balled. "Wake up!"

Her breath hitched with both fright and pity. She drew near, sitting on the bed with her hands in her lap, watching the King's shallow, slow breaths. He did not look like the beast who commanded a ruthless empire, only a man at the end stages of his life, and here he was alone, with no one to grieve him.

Her head snapped to the Prince when she saw blue flicker in her vision. Against all logic, the Prince was powering up his ki, molten blue rippling off his body. He clenched his fist, a ball of ki turning on its axis in his palm, with only the singular intent of blowing the tower to smithereens revealed in the gleam in his eyes.

She jumped up, grabbing his fist, and closed it with her own. She gaped with disapproval. "No!" She whispered furiously. "They'll know it was you."

The blue light of his ki flickered on their faces. His eyes, black embers, staring at her accusingly before his fist balled tight in her palms.

Finally, he reabsorbed his ki, turning away from her sharply, shoulders taut with unshed violence.

And all at once, something aligned in him, and he whipped back around, striding over to his father and ripping the crown off his head. Bulma inhaled sharply. The Prince clutched it and whirled, throwing her over his shoulder and plunging out the window.

He hopped out the window, using his ki to cushion their fall as they landed, and ran over the rooftops, sprinting all the way south back to his quarters.

Only when they were perched over his window did he bother to glance around for guards, but they were focused only on what was in front of them, not above, and he bounded over the edge, twisting and grabbing the ledge with his free hand and swooping them right through the window. He tossed her onto his bed, yanked his curtains closed, and immediately began pacing, staring at the crown in his hands.

Gohan scrambled in. "Bulma!"

She made her way toward him, squeezing him. "I'm okay," she assured him, though her voice was less than convincing. The Prince still strode, back and forth, turning something over in his head furiously.

"What are you going to do with it?" She gestured frantically at the crown. "Surely you can't just take the man's crown off his head."

The Prince turned, baring his teeth. "Of course I can't! It's highly illegal! Just as I am barred from seeing him, against penalty of death!"

"What? Why? He's your father, why can't you-"

"That's a good question!" He retorted forcefully.

Her brows unknit a little. "Why is he sick? What has he been diagnosed with?"

The Prince's pacing slowed. "I know not. I only know that it is terminal. A transmission found me two years ago to inform me, and I made my way home. It was a fool's errand!"

After a pause, Bulma injected a small notion in the quiet storm that was brewing. "That seems awfully convenient."

Bulma and the Prince's eyes met.

"Indeed." He braced his legs, dangerously still, calculating eyes fixed on hers. "Saiyans are not known to suffer many malaises. We have strong immune systems, thanks to our forays around the galaxy. Often we do not live to old age, but because we live for blood. I cannot recall though the last time my father was involved in any military exercise." He looked down at the gold crown in his hand, the red jewel catching the light.

"Vegeta." It was the first time she'd ever said his name, and she stepped toward him boldly as if she wasn't aware of the error. "Is the Saiyan immune system tolerable of poison?"

He stiffened.

He looked down at the ground, and then back at her with an arrested look. "The Council."

"Perhaps." Her eyes widened. "How long until his servants wake up?"

"Servants are third class without nearly as strong a defensive reflex. Between now and hours from now, I cannot say."

"And what will they think happened?"

She and the Prince stared at one another.

"I can accuse the Council of it."

Gohan, forgotten, interrupted. "But that's lying!"

"He can't confess," Bulma countered, although reluctantly. "Allowing their to be suspicion of him could be detrimental to life on Vejitasei as we know it, to us. It would be the Council's out. They could make Vejitasei even worse than it is now." She and the Prince shared a look, and Gohan looked between them desperately, not wanting to believe Bulma was siding with him. "But if you turned the tables on them," she posed, holding her hands out plaintively, "this could be your opportunity to begin investigating their intentions!"

"Or to silence them altogether."

She looked at him incredulously. "You mean," she paused, "consolidate power?" At his muteness, she grew more piqued. "You mean, silence them, silence them? Kill them? You want an autocracy?"

"They plan a coup anyway."

She threw her arms out. "What evidence do you have?"

He scowled. "Everything. And nothing." He crossed his arms over his chest. "That is where you came in. What did you find out today?"

Her lips pulled thin. "I was able to breach First Strike's security, but that alone took hours. I haven't found anything except security keys yet."

"That gives me greater initiative to make a move. Now."

Bulma was astonished. "You would take the power out of their hands and place it in your own. Is that not a coup?"

"They are already beyond the demands of law. I would only seek to impose it on them."

"That's awfully deceptive, given that you don't want anyone to know about your own crimes tonight!"

The Prince stood rigidly, his tone hot. "The Saiyan Empire was not founded on peace and negotiation. We are foremost a nation of military might. That I should act in this manner is wholly Saiyan...and therefore, legal," he issued dangerously.

"I don't understand you. First you complain that Saiyans aren't noble and forthright enough anymore, now you wish to plot and scheme your way to the top, like a, like a Council member!"

Gohan cringed. She'd made him mad now. "Can't you now wrap your small mind around it, Earthling?" The Prince sneered, and Bulma simmered. "The Council can be arrested on regicide and we can temporarily dissolve the Council."

She scoffed at his obviously empty claim of 'temporary.'

"I would have the Elite's automatic support. They are loyal. And perhaps even the Kai's, who would wish to avoid any further internal strife, unless they seek to uproot the entire Saiyan political infrastructure. And I would welcome them to try."

"Use the legal process," she begged him. "Don't risk your position any more than you have to."

Her disapproval seemed to goad the Prince into even sadistic heights. "Would you have me kill one of the Council members and claim they had confessed?" He asked her silkily, drawing closer to her. "They chose to end their own life, I'd say, to further solidify my claim?" He sounded as though he'd already thought it a brilliant scheme. "A nest of vipers, and I would have no choice but to assign myself complete control to keep the empire and my role in it secure. It would be as tradition wanted, my divine right: supported by the military, backed by the endless pockets of the Elites."

"And then what, huh?" She gestured wildly. "Would you reassemble the Council?" At his reluctant disgust, she snorted. "Of course not."

Gohan could clearly watch every one of Bulma's contradictions increasingly needle the Prince. "Need I remind you the Council members were never elected? They are bought. There is no risk of destroying a democracy on Vejitasei that does not exist!"

"Then install a rigorous and fair process to appoint officials to the Council!"

"Both my father and I have little power over the Council as it stands," he argued furiously, shoving his face into hers. "Would you have me do nothing? Would you have the Council rule? Because they shall. It is only time until they send me to the edges of the universe to contend with empty threats, or poison me, or kill me outright in the name of Vejitasei itself. They harbor no sentimental feelings toward me, I assure you. They wish to make me a puppet, and if I resist, they would remove me entirely from the situation. So, the Council rules. Where are you? How would you fare? And would you have them negotiate with the Colds? Would you like to be collateral, a commodity, shipped as a good from one Empire to the other? You are very lucky to have been assigned to Vejitasei's Science Wing, little woman. Or are you ignorant to how women fare on the front lines of war?"

Bulma grew red and shook with outrage. "I am, a far touch better than you!" Her face twisted with fury, and Gohan's own crumpled with concern. "I thought you were avoiding a game of thrones. You keep going at this pace and you're going to find yourself six feet under ground!"

"Are you worried about me?" He smiled brutishly, brushing her jaw with his thumb, a cruel gesture that mocked her earlier affection. She bucked back with revulsion. "Do not be, faithful hound. I am beyond touch. I am attempting to do this within legal constraints, after all." It was a lie, of course. He would only appear to be taking power legally. The crown still hung in his grip. "If need be, I can simply slay the Council and appoint myself by divine right."

Bulma's lips trembled. "You would have absolute control over everything," she said brokenly. "Without elected officials, without any division of power, it will be one man, one man who has terrified the universe."

His eyes narrowed at her. He was listening to her, though. She was an off-worlder, a slave, a non-Saiyan. But nonetheless he was arguing; he was trying to see if he could change her opinion.

"A division of power is a weakness," he said with tight control, gaze wandering over her disappointed, crushed expression . "And the Council and Elites are a testament to its deficiencies. I would think you would rather have it this way." He said it as if he were almost affronted.

"I want to help make this universe a better place," she confessed through her teeth, "but I can't if your schemes are bonkers!"

"Who are you to speak of trust?" He hissed. "Besides, I thought you faithful to our cause." He smiled, leaning closer. "After all, you assisted me in taking my father's crown. Who holds the crown, holds the Empire." The threat was thinly veiled.

He was implying he could out her.

"I didn't think I'd be an accessory to a crime!" She said between her teeth.

"You know how I know you are truly powerless?" He leaned in close so that their noses were touching, looking at her under severe brows, invading her whole view. "Because you sought to stop me from making that mistake in my father's room. If you were working for the Council or that group of foolish insurgents, you would have let me walk right into my mistake. And that's how I know you have no one else." His black eyes gleamed wickedly. "You make a good doggy."

She slapped him.

Gohan leapt forward, grabbing her wrist at her side.

"I respected you," she spat, trembling as Vegeta seethed above her. "But not any longer."

They'd never seen his posture so taut, his eyes so deeply forbidding. He was no man anymore; the Right Hand of Darkness had finally been revealed to them. "Waiting to do it legally is to wait for the executioners blow," the Prince assured them with deadly force, "and you will help me do it."

"Do you really think so little of me?"

It wasn't a question Gohan had expected from Bulma, but whatever it was, the Prince felt its impact. They shared a look that left Gohan breathless with worry before they both turned away, and Bulma marched past Gohan as if he wasn't even there. He took one last look at the Prince's back, and hurried after her.

Bulma slammed the doors, hollering unintelligibly. She stomped to the bed, ripping a pillow from the top of the coverlets and heaving it at the wall before throwing herself onto the bed. Gohan approached her cautiously, sitting beside her as she buried her head in her pillows.

She pried one from her face and looked up at him. "I can't stay here any longer. We have to escape."

Gohan paled. "I don't think that's a good idea..."

"I can't do this anymore." Her eyes shined with a decades worth of tears. "I'm tired of being in a cage, Gohan."

He looked down at his hands, laying limply against his thighs. "Miss Bulma, I don't think...I don't think he thinks so little of you." He glanced between his white hands and her blue eyes, which watched him numbly. "What do you mean?"

"I mean, he wouldn't have bothered listening to what you had to say if he didn't think much of you. I think, I think his arguing with you is an answer to that question."

She stared at the wall, at the wallpaper's coil of gold and red leaves entwined in each other. The room was quiet, and dark, one solitary lamp lit on the far side of the room. Everything was shadows, even him; he couldn't stay still long enough for her to make heads or tails of him, instead just flitting from one form to the other, the shadow of an Empire, a ghost, without substance, without something to grab onto.

"You might be right," she finally resolved, voice worn.

"I know he seems set on this plan, and he seems like a real jerk, but he must think highly enough of your opinion. I think, if you stay, you may eventually be able to get through to him. Even just a little bit." Gohan didn't say what he was also thinking: that the Prince was fond of Bulma.

She smiled up at him, a warbly thing. "You're right, Gohan." She sat up abruptly and threw her arms around him.

"Let's get some sleep, Bulma. We'll talk to the Prince tomorrow. Maybe he will have thought some more about what to do and came to a different conclusion."

Tonight, Gohan was the one to tread over and turn out the light. Wearily, they undressed with their backs to the other, the bed large enough that despite Bulma's flopping around at all hours, Gohan never felt her. It was why he preferred to sleep on the couch in her apartment.

"Good night, Miss Bulma," he said wanly, still chewing on the night's anxieties.

"Good night, Son Gohan," she answered softly, staring at the way the pattern of vines on the wallpaper tangled around the other until, with burning fatigue, she shut her eyes against the image.


	6. Chapter 6

"You've forced their hand!"

"Good. Now it will be revealed who works against me."

Acutely aware that he had become a third wheel, Gohan watched from the small dining table in the far corner of the Prince's bedroom as Prince Vegeta and Bulma argued. The Prince had come charging in demanding Bulma find the link between the Council, the Colds, and First Strike, immediately. Expectedly, Bulma hadn't taken kindly to his tone of voice, and now the pair were quarreling at the foot of his bed.

Three bells had tolled at 1100 this morning, ringing into the harsh, vacuous white sunlight. Three bells to inform the Palace and the world that the King was dead.

Prince Vegeta had learned alongside everyone else as he met with Vejitasei's Judges and the bells rang their dirge. Gohan and Bulma had been shocked to find out the Prince's role as the "Right Hand of Darkness" wasn't simply a pet name; the Prince had been promoted unprecedentedly to Chief Commander nearly a decade ago. To the military force and the Saiyans' delight, however, he'd refused to relinquish his combat position for the time-honored position, opting to continue laying waste with Vejitasei's ground troops while strategizing the lines of skirmish with the very Judges of the Saiyan Empire themselves. He was beloved, and he was indomitable. Vegeta had campaigned for seven Standard years, urging expansion and putting the fear of god into those planets whose only crime was hoping to remain neutral and unaffected, while his father was to helm the Empire at home.

Instead, his father lay ill in a black tower above an isolated metropolis in a vast desert, and his empire went on without him.

A messenger had interrupted the designs of the Judges and the Prince, sprinting and stumbling into the room just as the three bells sang. Vegeta had bolted to his feet.

The King had been found dead.

His servants had been slain.

And, most unsettling, his crown had been "liberated."

Vegeta had immediately instructed the City Watch to be on high alert, and his galvanizing of the city's forces was already making the Council squirm. They feared a military coup. The castle sat hushed and rigid with paranoia. With the King gone, the rules that their daily lives had obeyed were nullified and now open to redefinition. And who might rewrite them?

Bulma watched the Prince tensely with her arms crossed as he paced.

"It was a Council member."

"You have no evidence of that," Bulma countered, again, and they started up the familiar round of arguments.

"I need information, and I need it now!" The Prince was seething down at her. "What good are you to me if you cannot supply me with information when it is most necessary!"

To her credit, Bulma had been trying. She'd slept fitfully, and Gohan had opened his eyes at 0500 to see her sitting in the corner on the carpet, the laptop's harsh light bathing her pallid face as she typed manically in the dark.

"Miss Bulma?" Gohan's voice had drifted across the room, sleepy, hushed. She didn't act as if she'd heard. "Bulma?"

Startled and wide eyed, Bulma had glanced over in his direction as if she'd forgotten he was even in the room. "Yeah, kiddo?" Her voice was strained and tired.

"Have you gotten anywhere yet?" He rolled onto his side, pulled the blanket up to his chin.

"Almost there. Almost."

If there was anyone in the universe that could do it, it was Bulma, Gohan was sure of it. But the Prince wanted results now.

"I can't just hand you over information like I have it tucked in my back pocket!" She threw her arms up in exasperation. "Your being a Prince doesn't just force things to appear out of nowhere, you know!"

"The same woman who absconded with Saiyan military documents to hand them over to First Strike," he replied silkily, stalking forward, "cannot steal information from First Strike?" He shrugged, a pantomime of thoughtfulness. "Or is that you simply don't want to? Is it simply that you bide your time until Vejitasei is weak, and Vejitasei's enemies can strike," he purred, one step away from Bulma, who bent back from him, mouth parted.

Gohan could see it visibly impact Bulma as she realized just what kind of crime she'd committed against the commander standing in front of her. She'd stolen military documents. She'd stolen military documents straight from the source. And now she could not procure more documents.

"I'm doing all that I can!" She cried.

"I think when I finally kill you, I will take my time, and keep it nice, and slow," he crooned, his rumbling vocals a caress as he stared down at Bulma, who shook, face red. "A traitor's death."

"You," she huffed, balling her fists, "you are a delusional, arrogant, egotistical maniac! I've had it up to here with you!"

Gohan's palms had grown sweaty, and he didn't know if he should try to diffuse the situation or let them continue to forget he was there. Bulma and the Prince were often arguing, but no matter how much he threatened her, the Prince had yet to put a hand on her. As edgy as it made Gohan, worrying about protecting Bulma while knowing full well he was no match for the Prince, a part of him was growing confident that the Prince's every intention was to milk as much information and agency out of Bulma as possible, indefinitely. Arguing with her had become somewhat of a passing game to the Prince, and while Gohan didn't like seeing his friend used so, he couldn't say it was all for nothing. Vegeta didn't realize he gave as much information to Bulma and Gohan that he required of them.

And Gohan felt, even if naively, that Bulma's refusal to let the Prince walk all over her was good for the Prince, too. He didn't think the Prince had many people to tell him no, which wasn't good for anybody. And both the Council's imposition on his ascension and Bulma's reminders that he shouldn't splatter them all couldn't be a bad thing for the future Saiyan Empire.

Vegeta cut Bulma off from whatever she was tediously explaining and strode away, grabbing his gloves from his desk and tugging them on. "I must go speak with the Council now and discuss my coronation. There is no way that they would hold that from me," he scoffed, "but it will not come without them withholding something else."

"Go on, then. I'll just sit here and continue hacking the superior defenses of an intergalactic military organization while you go have lunch and discuss jewelry!" She yelled. Bulma was livid, stalking back to her room to sit in the corner and angrily smash her fingers into the keyboard.

The Prince pulled on his cloak, clasping it at the shoulder.

Gohan swallowed his fear and stood more upright. "Prince Vegeta, sir," he asked politely, "it might be easier to work on this if we had something to eat."

"You'll get food," the Prince said leisurely, "when you've produced results." He sent Gohan a wicked smile before striding out the door.

Gohan's shoulders slumped, and he made his way into their temporary bedroom to find Bulma on the floor peering up at him intensely.

"Is he gone?"

Gohan nodded uncertainly.

"Good. The jerk. I can't wait to be rid of him." She was typing furiously, followed by the familiar, tinny beeps of a call spanning thousands of leagues of space.

Gohan frowned with concern. "Are you calling Mom?"

Bulma nodded, smile splitting her face, making Gohan uneasy.

"Bulma. I see you're still alive," ChiChi sniffed, and Bulma stuck out her tongue. His mother had always had high expectations of those close to her, and while Gohan liked to please her, Bulma didn't much care to.

The women, however, despite all their posturing, were as close as two estranged and lonely women on the same hard path could be; their love for Gohan, peace, and revenge superseded it all.

"I called because I need to know exactly where you are in the plan and to deliver news. How long until you leave?"

"Not much longer now." His mother's face looked as haggard as it did hopeful. "The Kai's are talkin' about it like it could only be a matter of days. They seem to be worried about somethin', but they won't tell Goku what the fuss is all about."

Bulma and Gohan shared a look.

He scooted close. "Hi, Mom."

"Oh!" ChiChi's face lit up. "Hi, Gohan! Are you already done with today's homework?"

He shook his head respectfully, but Bulma didn't try to hide her eyeroll. "No, not yet. But almost."

Bulma interrupted. "Have you heard anything about First Strike assisting us when you get here?"

"Why, no, I haven't. The Kai's don't talk much about them. Only the Colds and Saiyans." His mother shrugged dispassionately. "They must not have much of an influence on the Kai's plans."

"ChiChi, tell us what you know about the Colds and the Saiyans," prompted Bulma. "Anything, everything. Start at the beginning."

ChiChi scowled. "You know it all already!"

"We need to hear it from you. You've heard many more stories than we have, rubbing elbows with Kami and the Kai's. Whereas all I've picked up is the old news from slavers and work reports. Begin like we're new to this, please. I need to review it all to make sure we're not missing a thing."

ChiChi frowned but concentrated. "Well, okay."

Bulma and Gohan settled down for the familiar story.

...

"King Kai told us a bit about the war when he and Kami first took us from Earth. He said the Saiyans and the Colds have been two superpowers for a long time now, and each one controls a half of the universe."

"Because the universe is infinite, there is always more room to expand," Bulma murmured sadly. "Always more planets to conquer, or exterminate."

"The Colds have had their hands on the Northern hemisphere for time out of mind, long-lived as they are, and have accumulated massive wealth. There ain't much resistance because their colonies frankly don't remember life without 'em, and would likely suffer economically if they were to part ways, though no one's looking to.

"But the Saiyans are relatively new to this. The Saiyans had spent the last thousand years as nomads, having lost their original home planet to a red giant, which was making it uninhabitable. It's a shame, because it meant the previously planet-bound Saiyans bought some aircraft, keelhauled the other races on their planet, and discovered what it was like to have to raid for supplies above atmosphere. They were a scourge on their galaxy.

"About 2,000 years ago, there was an exceptionally strong Saiyan. Nightmarishly strong. The Saiyans harnessed his brutal, excessive might, and they laid waste to many, many border planets and upended Cold outposts until they negotiated new lines in the universe. Now, with the 'verse carved out, the south going to the Saiyan desert warriors and the north solidly Cold territory, the two empires could rule independently and even with some courtesy and some trade policies.

"The Cold's, on the other hand, they're known for being avaricious, aloof, and shrewd. They lead long lives, and so they play a long game, a calculating one. And with their long lives, and what, with their asexual reproduction and lack of value for kinship, they're bored creatures. They've got a lot of time to move their pieces just so, and it's their pastime, their pride.

"While the Saiyans are completely contrary creatures. Neither sly nor subtle, the Saiyans take what they want directly with no concern for the consequence, only the prize. They have unsurpassed strength, the upper hand physically on most creatures in the 'verse, as if some demented god bred 'em just for the purpose. Death is no hiccup to them. Death is indicative of an attempt, rather, and the attempt is everything. The attempt is what is Saiyan, and anything that is un-Saiyan is lesser than, and anything that loses is un-Saiyan, and what wins is divinely superior even as nothing's been strong enough to beat 'em. It's why they can justify it all.

"Since the mighty super-Saiyan two thousand years past, the Saiyans have begun real empire building, transforming from pirates, from reavers, to investing in infrastructure and technology, swallowing up more border planets, extending their reach southerly—and in that thrust, found Earth."

"Just another planet to be gobbled up," Bulma mused, her voice husky with melancholy. "I imagine every planet is the same, day after day, that you might get pretty desensitized to pleas for mercy."

ChiChi nodded over the vid com, looking at her lap solemnly. "The Saiyans have made it their prerogative to expand and grow their might so that they grow their tax base and work force, consensual or not. They whisper about a defensive stand against the Colds like some crier of the apocalypse. And the mistrust is not unwise. The Colds are devious, and so far removed that it's hard to discern just what they want. They do not suffer anyone to share in their wealth or status. So what are they amusing themselves with the Saiyans for? Are they just too far south to extend their military might to snuff 'em out without overextending themselves?"

"Perhaps they amuse themselves by watching the Empire implode from the inside," murmured Bulma dryly.

"That's a possibility," Chi Chi nodded.

Gohan's little voice seemed to come from nowhere. "What happens," he cleared his throat, "once the Saiyan Empire has been toppled?"

"The Kai's won't let it fall, honey," Bulma murmured, frowning as she chewed her lip. "It's too risky. They'd be inviting the Cold's to sweep right in and lord over yet another hemisphere. It's an overture to tyranny. So they'll prop it up with a shadow government. Make sure it abides by the Kai's laws. Those who cannot go home will be given certs of freedom and work passes, and they can travel where ever they want in the universe on the Saiyan's dime as recompense. The Saiyan economy will be restructured. And then the Kai's will turn their set of eyes to the Cold's."

"Restoring balance is only half-complete once our work is done there on Vejitasei. Then it's into Cold territory, with every weapon the Kai's have at their disposal. Goku is just one of them."

"Cheech," Bulma interrupted uneasily. "ChiChi, we have news. Tell the others. The King is dead."

Bulma's voice held steady, but her face was sallow as she watched ChiChi absorb the news, ChiChi's mouth working soundlessly.

"It's only days now," ChiChi whispered. "Just days now, don't you worry. You guys get the signal, you take the shuttle, and you get the hell out of dodge."

Gohan and Bulma nodded at the vid com apprehensively.

* * *

 

Vegeta strode down the hall, nodding curtly at his guardsmen before sweeping into his quarters.

"What news do you have for me," he barked, gaining on the pair, who sat huddled together on the woman's bed. She lifted a sullen face in his direction, glaring, as the boy blinked at the Prince's sharp tone tiredly.

"You," he directed the woman, pointing. "In my room. I wish to speak with you."

"Yes, master," she grumbled resentfully, pulling herself off the bed achingly. He heard her murmur to the boy, watched her drape a blanket over his shoulders and ruffle his coarse black hair, before standing straight and walking to him, glowering.

He turned on his heel, led her to his desk, and slid into the wide leather seat. He undid the clasps on his cape with swift execution, and then grabbed for a folder a servant had left upon his desk.

The woman stood at attention with poorly restrained animosity. Her blunted hair brushed her shoulders when she shifted on her feet in impatience. He turned to hide a smile at her impetuousness, an indolent, smug pleasure derived either from her audacity, or because it gave him an excuse to discipline her.

"Let me guess: you have nothing to offer me."

He could practically hear her teeth grinding. "Not yet."

He surprised her by changing the subject. "You're a woman, are you not?"

Her expression of shock and recoil made him smirk, and this time he did not hide it.

"What the hell kind of question is that?"

"Here you are, living in my apartments, and you have not made yourself useful. If you cannot—or will not—give me answers on the doings and whereabouts of First Strike, then I'd think you would have begged for your lives with the juncture between your legs. After all," he grinned toothfully at her now, "here I am, a warm-blooded man—"

She choked, disagreeing with his opinion of his own warmth.

"—and you, a warm-blooded woman."

The way he lingered over "woman" and it was as if he had ripped the door off the hinges that had separated them, suddenly painfully aware of the reality of the other's sex. The possibilities. Almost ten Standard years of pent up desire.

"If you are not my whore," the Prince rambled, signing papers nonchalantly and ignoring the trembling woman, blushing beside him, "then you must be someone else's. You do not put out for me, you put out for someone else." His pen idled, and then stopped, and he looked up at her darkly, barbed smirk curling. "Why have you then not tried to seduce me?"

Her jaw dropped. "Why, why should I?"

"You do not wish to bed me?" His pleasure at her discomfort was etched all over his face.

"No," she croaked. "That's not my intention. Not even on my radar, buddy."

His smile was needle sharp now, broad cheeks crinkling his eyes with maleficent glee. "Not even if I offered you something in return? A position on the Council once it reforms, maybe? A night between those sheets"—his eyes flicked to the bed, now quite obvious beside them—"for a political favor down the line?"

She'd gone white, clutching her hands in her lap. "What are you suggesting?" She whispered.

"That that's the difference between you and those who rule now." He turned his attention to the paperwork in front of him, picking up his pen and scrawling his signature, large but compact, with smooth, flowing penmanship. She had not expected an intergalactic tyrant to have paperwork.

"You have a paradigm that you follow," his voice suddenly detached and patronizing. "As do I. Those who serve the Council have yet another paradigm, and it is not one that serves Vejitasei. It is not one that brings glory to our ancestors or sets a precedent for our future."

Bulma tried to control her shaking, twisting her hands together with her teeth clenched. "You're a traditionalist, then. A nationalist."

"I am not blind to the merits of expansion and partnership, so long as it does not supersede who I am at my center. Superior. A Saiyan. By blood, born in blood."

His gaze lingered on hers.

"Then by that logic, the Council is only doing what is at their core," she disputed. "At your very being. The hunt for power. The strength by which to use it, and brutalize others on your upward climb."

"They subvert their natures to grasp for power in duplicitous ways," he debated, his tone bored, even condescending. "That is not the Saiyan way. They plot against other Saiyans. Saiyans do not plot at all. We offer all living things a chance to fight back, because we lust for the fight itself, not the reward. Not this, this slavery, and this scheming, and this cowardliness." His nose wrinkled.

Did the Prince disagree with the slave trade? She found it hard to believe. "You're all the same," she countered. "You all want the same thing, don't you see? What you want." She didn't know why it bothered her that the Prince refused to see her point. She had to make him see. Up here in his ivory tower, he may have a grasp on the dogma but had not seen them warp in practice. Her slavers had had no desire, before they shackled her, to hand her a weapon and let her make at attempt for her life."You all act on your own urges, and your Empire has been built to support individual power plays from the ground up, because all violence is rewarded. Usurping simply indicates superiority. The Council is acting very Saiyan-like." He sent her a dark look, but she continued roughly. "You act like there's camaraderie in the Saiyan Empire." She laughed derisively. "There's only Saiyans tearing at each other's throats for empty titles."

"Everything we do has selfishness at its center," he proclaimed, looking up into her eyes from his paperwork, unruffled. "Even our most charitable actions are self-serving. You are an example of that. Besides, this is not for me. This is for us." She blinked, though he did not slow down. "For Saiyans across time and space. I do not do this just for me. I fight for my pride and the pride of all Saiyans before me. The Prince is merely a vessel," his black eyes bored into hers, willing her to understand, "and the accomplishment and pride of triumph is both secondary and necessary. But at least I do it for those who have fought for my continued survival, and not those who would bring it to an end."

He turned back to his desk, effectively dismissing her. "Think on what I said, Bulma." Her real name on his lips was jarring. "A favor might someday be all that stands between you and what you desire."

"I would never, never, s-s-sleep with you for political ends," she protested, face white.

"No?" He watched her under long lashes. "Then for what reason would you?"

Her mouth moved, but nothing came out.

"For affection?" The Prince sneered as if she had proved his point.

"I would never," she whispered harshly, staring at the wall above his head. "Because you cannot understand the concept of peace or love."

The Prince leaned back in his chair, quill in his relaxed hand. "Love is a primitive phenomena, a hallmark religion of weaker races. Those whose eyes are on house and home cannot climb. A more civilized and superior society knows that there is only the climb."

He leaned towards her, black eyes sharp, willing her to be convinced. "Look out my window, and you will see our building where we engineer children and then send them to conquer border planets without ever knowing a loving touch." He turned back to signing his papers indifferently. "Love is powerlessness. Our Empire's success is evidence of it."

"You're a monster parading as a civilized man," she ground out, shaking. "I would never sleep with you because it would be beneath me."

It was the Prince's turn to be astonished, watching the woman turn and stride to her room without waiting to be dismissed.

* * *

 

The room was wooly-thick and silent with the night.

Her laptop flashed, beeping erratically.

"I did it."Bulma blinked. "I did it!"

She hopped up, foot caught in the blankets nearly causing her to toss her laptop. Gohan lay unmoving on the opposite side of the bed, sleeping deeply. She bolted to her feet, striding out of her room and winding through the sitting room, heading straight for the Prince. He lay asleep on top the coverlets, arm draped over his face. He slept neither nude or in pajamas but in his suit, ever dressed for battle. She slid into his bed, crawling closer to him. "Vegeta," she urged, placing her hand on his round shoulder and shaking it a little. "I did it."

The Prince's eyes flew open and he stiffened. All he saw was the woman's face beaming at him, shadowed and whitened in the light of her computer.

He cringed. She was in his bed, she'd snuck up on him—

"I know what's going on, Vegeta." Her eyes gleamed with her elation.

He sat up fluidly, rubbing his forehead with the back of his bare hand. The woman took it as an invitation and scooted in close to him, shoulder to shoulder. He froze in shock.

"Oh, excuse me," she murmured, adjusting her hip and dragging his tail from under her bottom to place it behind her on the pillow. The Prince gaped.

"Take a look at this." She sat the laptop in his lap—in his lap—and hit a button. Hundreds of messages began pouring over the page.

His eyes dilated, and he stiffened again, this time with the electric shock of comprehension. "This is First Strike's message system."

"Yes." She nodded enthusiastically. "Everyone's," she explained, voice dripping with exhilaration. "Full access." Her timbre dipped low, husky with success. "And the organizer's folders, here."

His eyes began flying over the words offered up by her fingertips.

"Vegeta," she interrupted, with less confidence this time, turning to face him. "They've made a deal with the Colds—and with unnamed Council members and Elites."

His eyes flew over the messages—hundreds and thousands of messages—before he turned to her in the half-light.

"The Colds have offered them cash. Lots and lots of cash, and positions on an intergalactic council. In exchange for Saiyan labor."

They stared at each other as the cold truth enveloped them.

"Look here." She leaned over and tapped a button. An e-mail popped up.

He read over it, goosebumps chilling him even as she narrated it.

"They mean to sell third class Saiyans, send them to purge planets for the Colds so that the Colds may sell them to distinguished, Cold-allied parties."

Each word roiled in his stomach.

"The Saiyan council members mean to profit because the coup passes power and legacy from your house to theirs. They'll found an oligarchy." Her voice rose. "To well and truly use Saiyans for their intended purpose—for chaos and destruction—as tools against the Saiyan Empire itself."

He breathed shallowly. Saiyan-blood against the Saiyan Empire. Success no longer in the name of their heritage and honor, but as shills and mercenaries-for-hire, as slaves for the glory and gluttony of their greatest rival.

"What are you going to do?" She murmured solemnly, watching him.

Every fiber of his being was shrieking at him to simply amble through the Palace and unleash fire on them all. There existed Elites with significant enough power levels, but not enough, not even all of them together, and all asleep in their beds. His power level had never been fully reached, and his well of power was deep, deeper than any other Saiyan in living history, deep enough to change the rules of the world as they knew it. He could exterminate them all. He could end them as quickly and thoroughly as pointing his finger.

"The coronation is the day after tomorrow," he said, deliberating. His eyes narrowed. "They would not plan a coup then, would they? They cannot hold me hostage, because they would not have public support. Without public and military support—"

"They may seek to just, kill you," she finished in a whisper. "Like your father. With no one to answer for their crimes. Or they may already have a convenient patsy in the wings."

"Then I must survive until tomorrow and take a stand in front of all."

She frowned, mind wheeling. "It could go really badly." She chewed her nails.

He nodded slightly. "You'll stay here. I will place guards outside the doors and windows. It's only a matter of might that everything goes smoothly. Once I'm crowned, I can dissolve the Council—"

"Vegeta, there's something else."

The words died in his mouth.

"I've talked to my friend. Goku is due to arrive with enforcements to mediate and peacefully settle things once you've been crowned. She's giving it three days."

Vegeta was already snarling before she'd finished. "I will not allow foreigners to dictate to me how my empire will be ran!"

"I think you can come to an agreement! All the Kai's and Supreme Justices want to see is power consolidated and evenly distributed so that no one else is needlessly hurt," she begged, although he looked thoroughly disgusted by the idea. "Vegeta, they're allies. They're offering you strength of arms. And once they've helped you stabilize your empire—and that doesn't mean keep you from your throne!—then they'll leave you in peace, and then excise the Cold Empire. It's a win-win. Vegeta, you have to believe me." Bulma clutched his shoulder. "They'll leave you autonomy, they'll leave it all up to you. I've spoken to Goku. He knows you're not a bad guy—"

The Prince abruptly bayed with laughter. "Not a bad guy?" He smiled, a malicious, forbidding, seedy thing, and she struggled not to shiver with the full weight of the blood-hungry gaze on her. "Who is the one who is deluded now, little woman?"

Bulma's head shook back and forth convulsively, even as she admitted, "Yes. Yes, you are. I hate your bloody Empire, and I hate you, for locking me up, and for keeping me in the Science Wing waiting for my death, in tedium, for taking my home and my life away from me." Her voice rose, breaking. "You're a very bad man of a very bad empire. But you have the Empire's best interest at heart. You have a set of cards that can set the future up for stability in a way that it hasn't known for centuries. They won't get in your way, so long as you...meet some small demands," she finished weakly.

"I would be their puppet. I would advance their agenda. Absolutely not!" He growled, a deep, rattling thing billowing from inside his chest, and shoved himself to the edge of the bed to stand. "Whose side are you on," he growled under his breath. "I cannot decipher it."

"I cannot just be blindly on your side," she argued, standing and walking toward him. "You've barely fed us since you've locked us in this room! Real winning behavior! You've bought my loyalty with threats!"

"This room has protected you!"

He could see that she was fiercely angry, but he was mad, too, and just what about her loyalty? Hadn't she grown faithful to him?

"You will no longer speak to your friends." He turned toward the window. "You may no longer have contact with them."

She looked abashed. "I am not yours to command!"

She grabbed his forearm, yanking him to face her, and he went stiff under her hand at the bold gesture. "You can't simply cut me off from my friends because you don't like the reality of things! They are giving you every concession."

"Watch me." His arm bunched beneath her hand.

She craned her neck, putting her snarling face into his. "If you want me to work for you, then you better leave me my resources!"

"I don't have to give you anything," he snarled back, grabbing the hand on his forearm and gripping it tightly. "A meritocracy is what would please you, is it not? Well, you have not shown me that you might be trusted with freedom. You have not earned it. And you will stay here when your friends leave. And you will work for me. And you have no say in the matter."

Tears had sprang up in her eyes, face screwing with horror and anger. "How could you? You can't! I'm leaving with Goku and ChiChi!"

"I think you forget who rules here, 42019." He dropped her hand. "And it is not your Kai's. And it is not you."

"They won't leave without me."

"You are nothing in the broader game of thrones. They will concede you to me and negotiate for more important things." His eyes glittered with frenzied malice.

She clenched her teeth. "You can take whatever friendship has sprang up unbidden around us," she seethed, tears falling hot on her cheeks now, "and you can shove it. You can shove it!"

She twisted out of his grip, grabbing her laptop and hustling to her room.

Vegeta wanted her to walk away, he wanted her to flee because it indicated her surrender, but he found himself sprinting to her, dissatisfaction curling his gut. He had to have the last word, and he spun her around. "You will still report to me everything you learn in the meantime." He grabbed her wrist. "You will spend every minute on that vid com and earn your life."

"I will do no such thing, you bastard!"

Her eyes widened as his tail curled possessively around her thigh.

"You cannot tell me no," he hissed, squeezing. "Of all the people in the universe. You cannot tell the Right Hand of Darkness no!"

"No!"

And the sheer absurdity of their circumstances hit Bulma.

For just a second, it was as if she could look upon them from above. Her face twisted with anguish and fury, his hand on her wrist, desperate to wrest submission from her. And with that second of objective sight, she realized where she'd felt this way before.

On a playground, tugged around by the hair by a bully who it was rumored only wanted her affection.

He wanted her.

And he had absolutely no language to convey it.

Bulma was reckless with a surge of bravery, and she set her jaw, tossed her laptop onto a desk beside them, before testily brushing her palm against the fur of his tail, coiled round her thigh. He stiffened, watching her severely, teeth glinting in the moonlight. Bulma's fingers curled around it, and she gripped it, but loosely.

"If you want this to work," she said, punctuating it with a little squeeze of his tail, and the Prince took in a sharp breath, "then you have to let me do what I wish."

"I will never."

She watched him with indecision, and then leaned in so close she could feel his breath hit her face, her eyes narrowing with determination. She was risking it all, she knew it, going out on a limb just to test a theory of misguided interest from a heartless Prince. "Let me help." Her breath hit his lips and she watched them twitch. She scowled upwards into his face resolutely. "In my own way."

She was going to end it there. She was going to pull out of the battle having made her point.

But she wanted to know what his lips felt like in the dark.

And so she kissed him.

Though they'd kissed before, it had been mechanical, with only the heat of self-preservation. Though Vegeta's lips didn't move, she felt his body stiffen, his tail tighten. But he didn't push her away.

It was only the heat of his body in the dark, his soft lips, but unresponsive, and so she pulled away, shoulders slumping involuntarily.

Vegeta grabbed her by both arms and pressed her flat against him, planting his lips firmly on hers.

They kissed in the dark against the desk, the moonlight streaming beside them. His hand wound itself round her neck, his tail squeezing her thigh, and she kissed him fiercely with a hard mouth, the back of the wall catching against her hair.

His hands moved to grasp her by the shirt front and he was solid beneath her hands, wide and warm, the valleys of his collar bone under her fingertips. The fact of him so near, the smooth suit under her palms, and she opened her mouth to him with yearning. His lips parted after some hesitation, and she took the opportunity to encourage him, her lips on his cupid's bow, and then his lower lip, to taste both tentatively with her tongue in the pale pool of moonlight.

There was an answering rumble in his chest, but he pulled back. "Promise me," he said, his voice cutting cleanly through the thick haze, a shadow with thick shoulders and inky hair, and the taste of him was in her mouth. "Promise me you will not betray me."

"I can't promise that," she murmured, looking up at his black eyes earnestly. "Because I have the right to make my own decisions and determine what's best for me. And I'm not convinced you know what's best for me."

"What I wish is most important, though," he cajoled, lowering his lips to her jaw. She drew in breath, eyes closing.

"One man's wishes do not a universe make," she chided.

"This man's does. And this man would keep you from leaving."

His lips were hot, working slow against her neck. "To keep me hostage...or to give me freedom if I stay?"

Even mouth to mouth with him, captured in his arms, he would not answer.

"Don't tell me," she replied sadly, disentangling herself from him and backing away. "I know your answer. And I can't agree to those terms."

He watched her with predatory awareness, but his tail unwound from her leg and he let her go.


	7. VII

There she sat at his desk, writing furiously, only to stop, squint at the paper, and begin scratching with her pen again. Her hair was mussed, and a rather austere pair of glasses were scooting down her nose, unheeded. He took the tips of his white gloves between his teeth and tugged one by one until he could pull the silken thing off completely, tossing them to his bed coverlet without looking away from the creature hunched over a sprawl of papers.

"How far are you," he asked.

She didn't stir. "Not too long now," she murmured, preoccupied with her manic scribbling.

He sat on his bed with a huff, looked around his room restlessly. Gohan watched from the corner before his head dipped once again to the task of his school work.

"I have something for you, meanwhile," Bulma informed him breathlessly, and the Prince bolted from the bed to stand beside her.

He hinged at the hips to scrutinize the sketches across his desk."This is a time-sensitive matter," he complained, even as his eyes widened at the breadth of work before him, readjusting his breast plate absently.

She didn't trust herself to look at him, so she didn't. Her eyes flicked in his general direction with exasperation, and she muttered something about his peevishness, which he ignored. The late morning light spilled between them, and she pulled a folded sheet from her lab coat breast pocket and sat it in its warm center.

"I've deciphered the code. Here is the list of Elites and Council members who are actively communicating with the Colds. You may go kill them one by one now." Her eyes rolled toward him, burning with disapproval. "I know that you don't agree with me," her voice rose, and he chuffed testily at the forthcoming lecture, "but I really think you aught to hold position until that crown is on top your head. I think, according to these communications here," she gathered up some papers to her chest, frustratedly flipping through them—too many, unsettling—"that there is something else abreast," frustration tugged at her, "something I'm missing—"

"Whose fault is that?" He interrupted, voice rumbling at her ear.

She turned to glower at him, but he only returned her expression dryly as he leaned over her shoulder. She straightened the papers primly. "These communications are ripe with references to a big day, but I can't decode it. I've ferreted out the names of Council members and Elites who are conspiring with the Colds, at least, but I think that's just the tip of the iceberg." She started shaking her head in exasperation. "From their tone in this correspondence, these council members believe they have the upper hand, that they have control of the situation. But I don't think they are." She looked up at Vegeta again with worried eyes behind wide glasses. "My concern is that they are not the only enemy. Knowing what little I do of the Colds, I can't help but doubt that someone as ancient and powerful would lower themselves to bargaining with Saiyan politicians unless there's something frighteningly complex at work. It smells fishy."

"The Colds would not bother themselves with it," Vegeta muttered, rifling through the papers in front of her.

"Meanwhile, the councilmen and elites speak back and forth of 'securing' the throne, which is an alarming allusion to dethroning you. Are they planning an offensive tomorrow? If only I could figure it out." She allowed her forehead to fall into her palm, squeezing her eyes shut in fatigue. He was relying on her, and to her knowledge, only she. The expectations he wanted her to effortlessly meet were filling her with panic, and the more intel she sought to dig up, the further buried she became.

"I cannot wait to show them how very wrong they are," the Prince hummed with a disturbing eagerness.

"We don't have enough time to figure this out," she cried, looking up with one blue eye imploring him, her palm mashed into the other side of her face with defeat. "Something about your coronation fills me with dread."

Gohan chewed his pencil as he listened with absorption.

Gohan knew she'd broken down First Strike's blockades in the middle of the night and uncovered a disconcerting connection between First Strike and the Council. She'd spent the last few hours manically scribbling notes and deciphering code at the Prince's desk, and while the Council's sins were gradually becoming clearer, Gohan was worried the escalation of events was going to unhorse her.

The Prince's controlled voice rolled over them. "This morning I met with the Judges. We found nothing that incriminates them in the correspondence last night, so I have urged them to come armed. I leave to confer with the Royal Guard soon and assure them no man that enters tomorrow should be considered above suspicion."

Bulma nodded weakly, biting her lip, gaze roaming frantically over her notes. "If you move your piece before they do," she murmured, "I worry they'd construe it as a coup, a purge simply based on your dislike of some philosophies or faces within your cabinet. And your consolidation of power could alarm more than just council members. It could disrupt stability abroad. What if they think you're seizing power?"

"But I am the heir," he contended smoothly. "Mine is divine right, and through me speak my ancestors. The provincials abroad would accept any change I institute as holy. Any improvements, hallowed."

Gohan watched Bulma chew her pencil, troubled by her wan countenance. He'd felt her leave their room in the middle of the night, and when she returned, she'd tossed and turned in bed until the sounds of the Prince waking could be heard, before the first sun swept up over the horizon, divorcing the sand from the night and marrying pale red sky.

He'd watched her hover in the dark doorway from his cocoon of blankets, early morning light making monochrome of the sitting room outside. Her head leaned against the molding with an overall air of melancholy.

Gohan was in and out of sleep when a shadow loomed in the doorway. He blinked as he saw the Prince pull up to the woman, who straightened in his sight.

"May I work at your desk?" He heard her ask stiffly. "I would like to continue my work without waking Gohan."

"You may," the Prince had responded with just as much formality.

And she'd bowed, and the Prince had nodded faintly, and then they'd walked away from each other in opposite directions.

She'd set to work immediately with nervous energy, and Gohan had rolled out of bed with a soft groan to keep her company. And though he was used to her bouts of total absorption in her projects, something was different this time.

When they'd lived at the tiny apartment in the Science Wing, sometimes Bulma would become overwhelmed by pressure at work and shut herself in the bathroom for a cry. Once she'd got the worst of it out of her system, she would move forward, make dinner, get some sleep, begin anew tomorrow. But since they'd came to reside in the Prince's quarters, she'd not had any relief. She was sleepless, she was pensive. Gohan felt a tug of resentment toward the Prince for holding her hostage this way. The Prince had given her a lot of work, expected impossible things from her. And because she wanted her freedom, and because she had her pride, she pursued them without complaint.

Gohan puzzled on it. He didn't understand the subtleties of personal relationships between men and women; what was between his parents had always just been. But he suspected that something complicated like that was at work before him. Except, in these circumstances, there was no room for joy, and all three of them were painfully aware of it. Nothing could grow in these barren times. And perhaps some of that was the cause of the tension between the Prince and Bulma.

Gohan frowned, perplexed.

Vegeta had pulled up a chair, and the unlikely pair poured over the paperwork in front of them. The Prince, absorbed with the work before them, had not given her much personal space or preserved his own like usual. Their heads bowed together.

"Here, and here," he could hear Vegeta saying, sketching something between them. "The Judges sit here. Öngdala will reach its apex at 1400. Elites here, here, and here. Council members front right."

"What about here?" Bulma's finger pointed at the bottom left corner of the map.

"Elders," Vegeta answered. "My Royal Guard will keep positions at every door." His feathered stylus whipped an "x" at each doorway. From the scribbles littered on the paper, the Prince would be well-defended.

"What about a disruption here?"

"Negative. Judges there."

The Prince sat back and slouched in the chair.

"At 1400, I give blood and accept the crown, and the bells will ring out over the galaxy. The ceremony itself takes a negligible amount of time."

But something else was threading together for Gohan, niggling at him. He tucked the dark hair in his eyes behind his ear.

"Give blood?" Bulma looked up at Vegeta in confusion. "What's 'give blood?'"

Vegeta gave her an indecipherable look, a mixture of haughtiness struggling with the need to indulge her. "My palms are opened up with the ritual tênto dagger. My palms fill with blood and sunlight, and an Elder places the crown into my cupped hands, and the sacred ruby glows with Öngdala in confirmation. I give my blood for my empire, and by blood, the crown becomes mine." The anticipation made him smirk briefly.

Her mouth had parted in shock. "Vegeta, your hands—"

She stopped herself and turned back rigidly to the papers in front of her. A Saiyan did not welcome another's concern for their well-being; it would be an insult to act like they couldn't accomplish something. More criminally, to question the Prince's ability to do it.

He sent her a look of annoyance. "I fear nothing."

She sighed, resting her cheek on her knuckles and chewing her lip. "Is there truly nothing that could go wrong?" She pleaded, slapping her hands on the table. "I have poured over this correspondence and this map time and time again. Sure, your defense has no holes, but something still seems awry."

"The ceremony is standard. If there is no way to ambush me during it, no violence can be done." He paused, almost awkwardly, studying her askant. "But I will not be back to my rooms until dawn tomorrow."

A surge of anxiety trilled through her. She and Gohan looked at him uneasily. "Where are you going?"

"The coronation tradition does not end after the ceremony," he explained. "It will not end until Öngdala pierces the sky again at dawn."

"What happens then?" Bulma's voice was girlish in its vulnerability, and it was as if the world had narrowed down to only she and the Prince. Gohan listened carefully.

"I cannot share that with you, little off-worlder," he answered firmly, but his eyes softened, lids lowering fractionally, and Gohan didn't miss it.

She frowned down at the papers, trying to keep her emotions contained. "You make yourself vulnerable," she whispered. "Something could happen then, and we'd be powerless to stop it."

He rolled his eyes, leaning back. "My power is beyond every Saiyan's range. Even an ambush can not eclipse it. It's not _my_ pain that you should seek to mediate." Then he smiled wide, a frightening thing. "All this talk of a fight at my coronation is making me eager."

"So are we just to wait here?" Bulma's eyes grew wide behind her glasses. "Will we be safe?"

He leaned back, chin resting on his curled fingers in thought. "I have an idea. But you will not like it." His eyes darkened.

"So you agree that this isn't the safest place for us should someone cause trouble during the ceremony?"

He nodded once.

Bulma made a disapproving noise in her throat and looked away. She detested the feeling of helplessness that saturated her every moment.

He leaned back, bracing his arms behind his head. "For generations, it has been," his eyes lifted to the sky as he searched for the words, "tradition, for the King to have at his disposal, a, a…group, or menagerie, of…."

The air between them grew chilled.

"Say it," she demanded, brows crashing down around blazing eyes.

"The King traditionally has a harem of women for his sexual needs," he enunciated slowly.

Gohan tensed, watching Bulma closely. To their surprise, she looked immediately into her lap and paled. She sought to control her shaking fingers by threading them through each other and squeezing.

Both males watched her cautiously.

"Yes. Go on." Her voice was just above a whisper.

"To keep you there for the night—"

Her voice grew hard, but she didn't look up. "As chattel?"

Vegeta stiffened. "I would not use you," he denied frigidly.

"Miss Bulma," Gohan interceded, pushing past his fear of intruding from the safe space where they'd forgotten about him. "I think he's right. It would be somewhere removed from any conflict, if any fighting were to occur. The Prince's enemies would have no reason to venture there."

"The King, ill as he was, has not indulged the harem for years," Vegeta tried to explain, his voice pitched low and rough, an angry defensiveness warring with a bizarre concern for her opinion of him. "There would be no reason to target it. And should a woman arrive the day of the coronation, why, no one would question why."

A jagged silence met him.

"And when I have finished my ascension to the throne," he argued, "I may come and get you without anyone the wiser."

"Why can't I just attend the coronation?"

"I cannot explain you," he dismissed brusquely. "You're not safe, and so you may not attend."

"Surely there must be another option?"

He scowled, suddenly exhausted of patience. "Why must you always argue with me? Trust me to know the safest quarter of the palace. That is where I'm sending you, and that's where you'll go until dawn breaks the following day."

"Yeah." She bowed her head. "Sure." Gohan and the Prince's eyebrows both rose with surprise at her passive, defeated tone. Her eyes didn't stray from her hands. "If that's what you think is wisest."

Bulma, too, reluctantly agreed that it was wisest. Because Vegeta was a traditionalist. He believed deeply in convention, in history and custom. Long-established Saiyan traditions were powerfully relevant, and participating in them elevated the event to an almost religious experience. It was, after all, the basis of his disagreement and his complaint with the Council and Elites: they didn't obey the traditions that he embodied.

He would partake in the harem, undoubtedly, and if not sooner, then still later. And she would assist the man in regaining his throne, because it meant more people could live freely, and because it was how she could buy her freedom. And then she would take her work permit and the dissolution of her indentured 'contract,' and she would leave.

They were right. It was wisest.

Gohan watched them sit stiffly shoulder to shoulder, each looking ahead as if the other wasn't just right there. But the set of their shoulders indicated all they were aware of was the other, within reach.

"My mother was a concubine." Vegeta's solid voice finally thrummed in the silence. "Royal right does not need to be corroborated by marriage on Vejitasei. Royal lineage is simply passed patrilineally." He paused, whether to make sure she followed or to gather his thoughts, he couldn't say. His fist unfurled absently, his fingers curling in and out from his palm contemplatively. "When I was very small, the _zve_ _'_ _ra_ —'women's quarters'—took care of me. Even as the heir, to be near my father was a privilege, its goal typically a brief military lesson or excursion. Saiyan warriors do not typically raise their young." He pinned her with a look that willed her to understand. "These are women who are not forced against their will. They live well, and they are proud of their rank. Women are…they are not so common among Saiyans. They do not often survive childbirth. Our gestational wing was built to make up for that. Therefore, these women are honored. They are not simply…used."

"Are they Saiyan?"

Vegeta's head tilted back slightly against the head rest, surveying her. He seemed to know what she was after.

"Not all of them," he admitted reluctantly.

"To be un-Saiyan is to be lesser than." She stared up at him rawly then. "That was the first lesson I learned on Vejitasei." Her voice dipped, harshly. "Don't lie to me."

"You will not be ill-treated while I'm gone," he insisted, patience unraveling.

She glared into her palms. It was wisest. It was wisest.

"What did you do before your home was purged?"

Vegeta's question surprised them both.

She looked up at him with reddened, guarded eyes. "I was the heir of a great industrial giant and a great fortune." Her voice was hard, her mussed hair coming free from behind her ear and obscuring half her face as she stared intensely from blue, blue eyes. "I was an engineer. I was a glamour girl, coveted. I was in love. And I was free."

Their eyes didn't leave the other's. The silence between them was pregnant with the unvoiced.

"Remember that," he finally advised her gently, and Gohan felt heat creep across his cheeks for witnessing what became more and more clear was a private moment that he was intruding on. "Remember how you have survived. And when I come to greet you as Emperor, you will not have to survive any longer. Keep your word to me, and you will know freedom again."

The two shared a look that Gohan couldn't decipher.

The Prince stood and belted his cape silently. Decisively, he slipped on his gloves and turned to leave. "I will be back at nightfall. Keep working."

Bulma again stared at her hands. They were pale ivory, fingers clutching each other to prevent the other from trembling. They were small hands, with slender fingers and rounded fingernails. They were a woman's hands, an Earthling's hands. Weak, but adept. They were the hands of a woman who met one thing, over and over: pain, perseverance.

It was wisest.

"My father will be here tomorrow," Gohan announced quietly once the Prince had shut the door behind him.

"I'm not going there, Gohan," Bulma asserted brokenly.

Gohan stared at the carpet, unsure of what to say. "I…." He gathered his courage. "I think it's smart. I don't think the Prince means it as an invitation to stay down there." His statement ended in a whisper, and he flushed.

Bulma watched him carefully. "Gohan, sweetheart, you're a bright kid." Her eyes were rimmed red with sleeplessness and nerves. "And I would not expose you to our arguments if I could help it. But I don't…." She gazed outward at nothing, face drawn. "I don't fear being a part of it. I fear that it exists at all." Her eyes moved to the carpet, before she stood. "I can't change his mind. I'm chattel, whether I'm here or there. I've done all I can to flesh out these plots, and your parents have moved beyond the reach of my transmissions, so I don't even know…I don't know even their plans. I just can't keep this all together by myself. I'm done," she finished tiredly. "I think I'll sleep now." And she shuffled from the Prince's room to their own, lab coat hanging limply from her petite frame.

* * *

For all that the Prince had no concept of privacy—after all, everything in a royal's immediate universe was his by default—he hovered at the edges of the room, watching the small woman's shoulder rise and fall as she slept, curled on her side with her back to him.

The young boy, the half-Saiyan, slept facing the doorway on the opposite side of the bed, nearest the door. He had the familiar inky black hair, and as it grew and became shaggy, the pin-straight stuff began to stand on end, disclosing his bloodline. There was something about the two sleeping peacefully in the rosy evening light as he watched them, a creature of war and power, that made a feeling zing under his skin.

The boy's eyes cracked open and blinked. He watched the Prince dully for a moment before slowly sitting up and rubbing his eyes. "Prince Vegeta?"

The boy clearly had no etiquette training. He was carefully polite but lacked all gestures of submission and intricacies of rank behavior. The woman had said they'd come from a planet with a democratic system, and it showed. And yet, while the Prince's Saiyan instinct recognized one of its own and its failure to properly submit, there was something refreshing in the way they spoke to him without pretension.

"You are here because your father is training with the gods?" The Prince ambled in, his cape catching the air lightly behind him.

Gohan nodded, clutching the blankets beside him with a flush of nervousness.

"You have lived with the woman for a Standard year. Have you been training yourself?"

The Prince had pulled up to him now, and looked down upon him.

"No, sir. I spend most of my time staying caught up on my school work."

The Prince's expression didn't change, but he pinned the boy with a look of intensity. "You have Saiyan blood in you. It must scream to get out. Do you ever feel its violence, calling to you?"

Gohan shook his head with wide eyes. "No, sir." He fidgeted. "I think I may take more after my mom."

"One of these days, its siren song will call out to you. And because you have not tamed it, you will not be able to leash it when it explodes from your very being. Consider training. If not for your own pride or heritage, than for her." He nodded at the sleeping woman.

Gohan nodded. "Yes, sir."

Vegeta's eyes had already left Gohan, and he floated closer to the woman, watching her. "Bulma." Her name on his lips was foreign; his tongue used to harsher consonants."Bulma." He crouched, peering at her.

Her brows furrowed before her eyelids fluttered. "Vegeta?" She blinked, before sitting up with dizzying speed. "What's wrong?" Her face tightened, her hair tousled from sleep.

"We must talk," he answered indecipherably.

She nodded, pulling her lab coat tighter around her and shuffling behind him out of the room, her slippers whispering against the carpet.

He slid into a chair at the dining table, and when she stood awkwardly at the edge, arms protectively around her chest, he scooted the other chair toward her with the toe of his boot.

She plopped down into it with surprise.

His dinner lay on porcelain platters before him, and he began buttering a biscuit. "Our defensive has been planned. I've activated the guard and alerted the Judges."

To her surprise, he handed her the biscuit.

She stared at it with wide eyes.

He shook it at her to make his point, and delicately, she took the thing in her fingers. He bent back down to buttering another biscuit, face smooth and calm, wide cheekbones just under his eyes aglow in the lamp light. "Are there any other concerns you'd like to address?"

She chewed thoughtfully before swallowing, and frowned. "I'm just worried that a physical defense is not enough. The Council don't just seek more money….They seek more power. And the kind of power their after isn't reached through knocking another Saiyan over the head." It terrified her. She'd admit, even to the Saiyan Prince, that she was no Saiyan patriot. But this was insidious. This was inviting even more moral ambiguity and complications into a system that was already sadistic. If the Council members sold out, it would be even harder to stay alive. "They've bribed their select Elites, who only care for themselves, the idiots," she cracked, and Vegeta echoed the sentiment, "and received their funding from them. But what do they need funding for? And all of this," she mused, "I easily pulled from the Saiyan COM server. The Empire's in part responsible for this conflict." She peered up at Vegeta, who was scowling at her with both disagreement and consideration. "Your security is laughable across the board," she cried. "This Empire isn't a culture of intellect—"

Vegeta growled.

"Just listen to some constructive criticism for a moment!" Bulma reprimanded him. "Look, you're using technology from other cultures without even fully grasping it! And you don't understand, you have to protect it with its own language. With code. You can't stand in front of a computer and look menacing and think that's going to prevent hackers and viruses."

Watching him carefully, she popped another bite in and chewed. "I was able to just waltz in with a primitively constructed radar and bypass a few pithy obstacles before downloading Saiyan ship schemes directly from your server," she balked. "Now I'm able to look into your communications system as easy as peering out a window. Council member-to-council member communications aren't encrypted whatsoever. The Council's only advantage so far has been allying with First Strike, who're shuffling mail from Saiyan to Cold hands for their own ends, whatever those are. You have an empire here spread across the universe who can only communicate through tech," she chided. "You've _got_ to protect your channels, or you will always be vulnerable. Tomorrow, no matter if you're crowned without incident—and the next day, and the next day, and forever."

Vegeta rested his chin on his fist. "I can not rely on foreigners to helm a project of that magnitude. I cannot trust them."

"Perhaps a solution to an issue of trust," she issued testily, "would be to treat them as respected employees and not rip them from their homes and exploit them."

He stared flatly at her.

She'd expected that. "What about training Saiyans?"

He answered her carefully. "We are a culture with select pursuits. We are creatures of instinct, and we project them through expansion—"

"Violence."

"Competition," he growled.

"A person can be competitive in the stock market. In a game of cards. But this ain't competition, buddy. This is purely physical domination. This is about the body. Yours is a game that always ends with death. In all the ways it can be condemned, at the very best, it's just not sustainable."

Vegeta seemed taken aback. "If a person cannot fight back, nothing changes in that person's relationship to power. Sustainability exists by default within that system. We always win; nothing changes."

Her voice grew urgent, her hand gesturing wildly with the last bite of biscuit in her fingers. "You're too idealistic, too constrained by what's narrowly 'Saiyan.' You're not seeing the whole picture here. You need to accept the reality that there are other ways to dominate besides through bloodshed, and be pragmatical here," she argued. Vegeta growled, a throaty thing, but she continued. "Isn't that why you're resisting just blasting the palace to bits to eliminate some rogue council members? This is a strategy you were pursuing before we even met. So," she swallowed the last bite, "I think you need to consider that dissolving the Council and the Elites is only _one_ way this Empire can be changed for the better."

She peered up at him. Well, he hadn't blasted her at any point during her sermon. She was not yet a crater, at least. He was growing scarier, though. The Prince really wasn't used to being _told_.

"You and I have different definitions of better," he snapped, bristling.

"Changed for your continued success, then. You need to consider training Saiyans for other occupations than warfare."

"We outsource that labor."

She shrugged. "Then pay those you outsource and earn their loyalty. Or make your own subjects more well-rounded." Bulma frowned to herself. "I don't understand. You're a smart man. You can't be the only Saiyan who can tell left from right," she mused with confusion, and then her mouth went slack, and she looked up at the Prince with embarrassment.

His eyebrow had arched, but he didn't call attention to her unwitting compliment. She was thankful.

"The hall outside your doors," she began, tucking her hair behind her ears contemplatively.

Vegeta surveyed her quietly. On what world did blue make sense? Not here, not among white sand, white light, red sky, blood currency.

"It's full of murals. Who painted them?"

"Honored Saiyans," he answered automatically.

"How does a warrior civilization have painters? Honored painters, no less?"

He looked at her flatly.

"You could be more," she finished. "You've been more."

"What does a primitive know of sophistication?" He snarled, tearing off the rest of his meat from the bone with his teeth. "It is others who need to change to adapt to our reality, our great traditions. We evolved like this for good reason."

"You're primates," she argued energetically. "You evolved like this, with thumbs and big brains, so you could use tools and create and re-create culture. And you continue evolving. You're a species capable of language, self-awareness, social cognition, problem solving, strategic planning, multi-tasking, organized meaning! Just like Earthlings! You have sophisticated, specialized brain functions, a neural apparatus with a prefrontal cortex that by design supersedes other vertebrates." She licked her fingers of butter, and he watched her fingers in her mouth with intensity. "Look, I'm just saying. We may not have an identical morphology, sure, we may have structural differences in our makeup. But you have art. You have buildings. You have ranked systems, and organized militaries, and social symbols." She nodded at the sigil on his breastplate. "You may not be a culture of intellect, but you're a species with a history of it. Use it."

He had never, in all his thirty two Standard years, had someone speak so defiantly to him.

"Is that all?" He managed to grit, breast plate heaving with the effort of his restraint.

"Why won't you tell me what happens after the coronation?" She interrupted.

A sly smile grew on his face, and he gulped the bloody wine down that slicked his glass. "Why so curious?" She looked suddenly uncomfortable, and he cut through his fruit pastry with the side of his fork, smile growing with each jerk of his wrist. "Why so eager, little woman?"

She tried to shrug. "Just curious," she grumbled.

"It's an ancient ritual." The Prince's tone became suddenly serious, before he speared a bite of pastry, smeared with cooled cream, on his fork. "I will not come by any harm from it."

And then he held the bite of pastry out to her.

Her stomach dropped. She looked at the golden, crusted bite with shock, barely breathing.

The Prince regarded her calmly from under his lashes, head tilted slightly.

Her lips parted in surprise. Slowly, she leaned forward.

She took his fork between her teeth and pulled. She chewed slowly, and then licked her lips of any residual cream, and his eyes fell on her tongue on her lips, and lingered.

She blushed furiously, seized a cloth napkin, and wiped her mouth to hide it.

He cut into the pastry again, and watching her carefully, heatedly, his own mouth slowly closed around the next bite, his lips gliding over the fork where hers just slid.

Her gaze plummeted to the table, her heart hammering.

"Is there anything else?" He asked, his voice a purr that climbed her spine.

"No," she mumbled dumbly. "Nothing else I have any control over, anyway." There wasn't any time to untangle it all. Only one night, and a stack of papers she'd poured herself over a handful of times and, over and over, salvaged nothing from.

"Control is, at times, overrated," he declared silkily, and stood, stretching the tension taut. "Wake the boy and feed him. I'd like to bathe and get some sleep before tomorrow's excitement."

She pushed her chair out from the table with her heels and stood weakly, brushing imaginary crumbs nervously from her lap. "I'm not satisfied that there's nothing left I can do to help," she lamented, glancing at him with worry. "That I've unraveled all these tangles. I'm just not satisfied."

"That's funny," the Prince replied, before tugging his breastplate off and throwing it onto the bed. "Neither am I."

His dark stare before he glided to the bathroom was molten, and she was left standing alone in the heart of his room, a waif in her slippers and tousled locks, a foreign heat creeping up her center.


	8. VIII

A sigh of wind from beyond the arched windows filled Bulma's nose with dry heat and dust, but she sputtered most with indignation.

The Prince had left for his coronation before her usual 0500 wide-eyed wake up without a word. Without giving Bulma another opportunity to protest to change his mind. Another chance to remind him to be cautious. Or a moment to touch him in support, just for a second, a pat on the back or a squeeze of the shoulder that she didn't know if a Saiyan was capable of fully comprehending but ultimately she wanted for herself.

Bulma's eyes were fixed on the horizon, the hard and merciless countenance of the desert merging and softening at the skyline, the sandy browns and blue gray diluted where they touched.

The Prince was wickedly smart, but he was also hair-pullingly stubborn. He was so convinced that he was untouchable, that he alone was the answer to every ambiguity. Bulma admired his confidence in the face of so much adversity, rooted for him despite his antagonizing her. He was cool, collected...provocative.

But something within her shook in the brief moments, not when he preened and gloated, but faltered. Something tight in her chest that unwound that night on the roof, when they overlooked the city, her hand squeezing his as he gazed uncertainly at his father's tower, unable to escape its suggestion that he was still just a boy. Spurned, insufficient, a tool rather than a son, whose control of his life and sense of self slipped like blood from his hands. That thing in her chest that had been so ruthlessly clamped down over the years loosened as he stalked her in the pallid dark of his room, unsure, malcontent, overcome with an inelegant lack of control. It wasn't when the Prince sneered and monologued that she felt it uncoil, but when he shucked the trappings of what he was supposed to be and became just a man, balking at her infractions on his personal space, stuttering as she uttered the one word he wasn't accustomed to hearing—"no"—and whose immature need to engage her fired a part of her that hadn't felt stirred in years.

If the Prince didn't understand the concepts _humble_ and _humility_ , she'd hoped at least he'd see the advantage of caution today, because their contrary partnership was the strangest kind of friendship, and she needed him to accept her help. To recognize her own need, the need for his safety, the need, the _right,_ to make her own decisions...and then this ubiquitous need that flitted out of sight when she tried to scrutinize it, this burning desire for...for...

But he'd left her without any indication that he cared how she felt, or felt anything in return.

Bulma's jaw tightened.

Gohan looked at her sympathetically, then turned politely away, wincing at her pale glower as it moved over the procession.

Gohan had been right on her heels as the Saiyans surrounded them, protective even while blanching with fear. At dawn, Saiyans had escorted the pair from the Prince's wing of the rolling palace to the Royal Saiyan _zve'ra._ The harem.

Even as Bulma sputtered beside him, masking her unease and humiliation as they corralled them with curses directed at the Prince and with any luck carried to his ears on an ill wind, Gohan was grateful. He inhaled the arid air that lay thick and oppressive in the hallway, admired the spiny, crooked trees that clung to the sand in the courtyard, and closed his eyelids as another rare gust of a sirocco from outside the enormous windows blasted sand against their cheeks, stinging. Even the wind on Vejitasei was hard and unforgiving.

Though Gohan, too, was filled with misgiving and anxiety, his father was coming. It was just hours now. The Kai's and their hero were perched to arrive between tonight's sunset and tomorrow's dawn to set the Saiyan status quo on fire. All of his family's hard work and all of Earth's suffering led to this moment, this balancing of scales, and Gohan would play his part dutifully.

There was a kind of omnipresent fear conjured just living as an off-worlder with no rights in the capital city of the Empire, and Gohan wasn't so far removed from it that he didn't feel badly for Bulma. This time though, he agreed with the Prince's decision. With a schism so clearly dividing the palace, with every guard standing in the Great Hall to witness the nascent crowning of a new king, the Prince's unoccupied rooms were at risk. In a seraglio nearly forgotten, in a quarter for women and children that hadn't seen any activity for years, Bulma and Gohan were rendered invisible.

But while Bulma was thrown into agitation and discomfort whenever she couldn't control a situation, Gohan, like his father, gazed inward to assess. It was the difference between countering an opponent's move with anger and denial, as both Bulma and the Prince were inclined to do, and accepting the play for what it was worth. He understood that today's jaunt to the harem was simply about biding time. And while Bulma was concerned about being "shepherded by our colonizers to an unknown and hardly alluring future with _no_ form of defense," as she'd grit beside him, Gohan picked up no signs of aggression from their chaperons. It was clear that the stately harem processional wasn't about escorting prisoners. These Saiyans were dressed in robes, not armor, reminding him somewhat of druids with their gold torques and its unsettling, gaping ape maw dangling at their chest. They rang with small bells strung through their tails, giving their procession an air of festivity despite their grave faces. Gohan found it improbable that they would harm a hair on the unlikely black and blue heads that the Prince had ordered all for himself. Filing toward unknown corners of the palace while sandwiched between a dozen Saiyan guards was actually quite safe, he wanted to remind Bulma. It was ancient, unquestioned ritual, and Saiyan's were nothing without pride for their heritage. And so Gohan, with the patience and perception of his father, surveyed, analyzed, drew conclusions, and had faith.

Despite Bulma's blustering and the threat of the Saiyan calvacade around them, Gohan was grateful for the fresh air and the heat of the sun on his skin from the morning light, slanting in the windows that loomed over them, Vejitasei's suns winking as they passed each column of sand stone.

"Cheer up, Bulma," Gohan murmured beside her sympathetically. "It can't be too bad."

"I'm sure it's simply opulent," she grumped.

Gohan sighed at her spark of irritation, but it was with a mixture of exasperation and relief. Because even if it were anger and haughtiness and all the things that made up Bulma at her worst, her snappy reply was better than the despondent woman that sometimes looked out at him from damp eyes. Without the will to fight back, she had only the grace and strength of one who'd endured suffering for a great length of time and had accepted that, at any time, her luck would run out. She'd long since learned to withhold her complaints, because disagreements aroused punishment. Gohan's company, at least, had inflated her spirits this past year, thawing a woman who had forgotten the sound of her own voice.

Her own stumble upon First Strike had been the catalyst to all this, anyway, the real blunder. Or was it? Once she'd seen the call for infiltration on the deeply encrypted intergalactic resistance network, once she'd flirted with the idea and disposed of it and then picked it back up and turned it around in her hands and really got a feel for the weight of it, once she'd set her mind and resolve to playing espionage for First Strike, Bulma'd been infused with purpose that had only swelled since being intercepted by the shadowy, coercive Royal in one of many a courtyard in the palatial seat of the Empire. But was having a hand in preventing a coup that could negatively impact the universe so bad? The Prince, even if unintentionally, had given Bulma the opportunity to make small, arguably significant changes to the Empire every time they heatedly debated, and Bulma was helpless to refuse the role. For all her entitlement and privilege and carefree adventuring before Earth's colonization, Bulma wanted responsibility. She wanted purpose. She wanted to help. She responded instinctively to problems that needed some creativity; after all, it was her grandest complaint while working in the Science Wing that innovation and competition led to the silence of one's very life.

Her ambition and assertiveness were reflected in the face of the man who had provided her an out, feeble as it was. But production had come to a stand still, and Bulma was whistling steam. She couldn't keep emotionally stable in their present circumstances, the battleground of the game vacillating and transforming every time she'd figured out the rules. The man who held the cards had his own agenda. Gohan frowned. Vegeta sucked hope out of any hidden space with the crushing mercilessness of a black hole's singularity. He was a fine-tuned instrument of violence. But it almost seemed like he wanted to protect Bulma. Why? Even if he played her to amuse himself and set her on tasks for his sole benefit, his purposes and pleasures were unpredictable. He offered safety in equal measure to the threat of death with every breath. It was no wonder Bulma couldn't find ground to stand on. Gohan couldn't figure out the game, either.

The processional began slowing, and immediately Bulma and Gohan became alert, trying to peer over and around the Saiyans in front of them as they made their way in their gray robes and the hum of hundreds of tiny bronze bells.

Gohan could see her visibly wilt before his eyes as she recognized the stop for what it was. Bulma's mouth worked soundlessly, her tenacity dimming. The Saiyans in the front of the procession came to a halt and turned their massive frames to regard the pair of off-worlders.

Bulma put her hand on Gohan's shoulder supportively. In turn, Gohan put himself in front of her, bracing.

The processional unfolded slowly from the front until opening upon four women, standing stiffly in front of a wrought iron gate in a wall of marble. Two were clearly Saiyan, and much older than Bulma had anticipated, speaking Saiyazim conspiratorially with one another, the ancient Saiyan lexicon.

They scrutinized Gohan as their escorts bowed and began to depart, until one of the concubines broke the silence.

"Who is this Saiyan to you?"

It was a simple enough question, except the woman used the traditional Saiyan pronouns of _this_ and _you._ The result was a clear delineation between the Saiyan who deserved a proper acknowledgment and the alien who wasn't worth one. Two of their mute slaves behind them took a step towards Gohan, bells tinkling.

"He's my—my son," Bulma stammered, eyes wide, squeezing Gohan close. "You can't take him away from me," she exclaimed with panic. "Vegeta would never allow it. He wants us both."

That seemed to settle them momentarily.

"The Saiyan will be handled by our servants," the oldest Saiyan snipped, her dated Saiyan accent nasal as if pinching her nose, the lines around her eyes and mouth drawing her lips into an unforgiving mien. "We," she gestured to the other concubines, "are in charge of the _zvi'tch._ "

_Zvi'tch'hala_ was a sharper, nastier alternative to off-worlder, which Saiyans generally used to describe any non-Saiyan, while _zvi'tch_ was reserved for particularly intolerable, dirty, and uncivilized aliens. _Zvi'tch_ weren't even off-worlders; their transgression was more severe. Even though this planet wasn't even their original homeworld, and even though most Saiyans were deployed out in the corners of space and not even _on_ world, Saiyans were always a _part_ of their world. _Zv'itch_ weren't made of the same superior, pure elements that were in the blood of all Saiyans. Saiyan being was a collective, it was in the blood. Saiyan's blood represented their culture, their history, and all other Saiyans. To spill and have it spilled was to bring honor, to share it and imbibe it was to consume and be consumed by it. To possess it and be owned by it, to be at its mercy, to be used, to be its most honored tool. _Zvi'tch_ would foul their purity just by speaking of it. _Zvi'tch_ was shit on Saiyan boots.

The allusion to dirtying the Prince by touching him wasn't lost on Bulma. Her mind flashed to the silken clamp of his tail on her thigh, his gaze on her mouth as she bit delicately into the biscuit held between his fingers...Had the feeling between them been real, or had she imagined it? The concubine's snub just confirmed that he should never have touched her, not beyond the cool practicality of using her as an instrument in his war. He should never have kissed her in the moonlight then, for what would he gain from it?

What had she been thinking? Softening to him? Like, like perhaps she had thought, after he'd granted her freedom, that something would remain between them? It was not like he could ever court her openly, not if he wished to avoid damnation, but only summon her from this hell, locked behind wrought iron doors and wetting his thirst for her or anyone else at his whim...

Why did her stomach lurch and rebel, as though rocked with betrayal?

Who had betrayed her? The Prince, or herself?

"I don't see why he wouldn't pick a Saiyan for tribute upon being crowned," the youngest complained to the other women. "Where is his Saiyan pride?"

"Strange tastes," the other murmured. "He was in the Borderlands for so long, perhaps he's accustomed to a diverse palette."

"Perhaps he means to beguile the boy, too?"

"It would not surprise me. He has been consorting with the ground troops in the Borderlands." The concubine's lip curled with distaste. "You know what they say about the third class on the front lines, lonely for women."

"Exotic is one thing, but this?" The youngest Saiyan woman waved her hand with frustration in Bulma's direction. "She's nothing to look at. Certainly nothing so fair or fetching to lie in the Royal Bed upon coronation." The woman's words dripped with envy. "She's just a primitive from a boorish, distant colony."

"You'd better shut your mouth or I'll shut it for you!" Bulma ground out as she stood rigidly in front of them.

"Beauty isn't everything," the eldest concubine interjected, voice dipping low as she moved forward. "Obeisance and good manners will buy your life while bedding a Saiyan. But I see you have none at all."

And she yanked Bulma by her wrist with a vice-like grip, hauling her through the _zve'ra_ gates.

"Get your hands off me!" Bulma tugged and dug in her heels, but slow and chronic starvation was winning this battle. She simply didn't have the strength to resist, and by the slump of her shoulders, her knees unlocking, Gohan watched Bulma submitting reluctantly to being dragged as he was led less forcibly to another area of the harem. _Stay strong,_ he urged.

"You are neither refined nor gracious," the eldest chided Bulma as she wrenched her down the hall. "Show respect for our great culture, or we will beat it into you. You will not displease the heir and bring shame on us."

Overcome with fatigue and despair, Bulma yielded.

She allowed herself to be pulled to a bath room, grit her teeth as they stripped her, sputtered as they pushed her down into the bath water. It was slick with oil, the steam curling at the surface, an acrid scent like sulfur and tossed mint and dates overpowering her.

"I am perfectly capable of bathing myself!" She hissed upon coming back up for air, spraying water through her teeth.

"I do not see why you were chosen for this great privilege," the woman griped, scrubbing soap in Bulma's hair with hard fingers. "Unless it's true what they say about the young King, and how he exists only to find the fissures and cracks in rock so that he can pour himself into it like ice and tear it asunder." The woman's eyes flicked up to Bulma's red-eyed glare without sympathy, pouring hot water over her head. "I suppose it's fitting that he means to break an off-worlder, though. In that light, taming and spearing you seems a fitting display."

Bulma's eyes widened with shock as the eldest concubine shoved her under the water for the last time.

All else happened in a fog. A bronze comb ran through her hair, parting tangles savagely. They wrapped her in a gauzey, black gown, just two long bolts of fabric draped each over her shoulder, pinned at the waist and hips with a shorter bolt, like a geisha's _obi._ She watched glassily as they linked a sinuous belt of gold at her hips, the snarling face of an Oozaru draped over the juncture at her thighs. Then they set the arch of her feet into long leather thongs, wrapping it round her calves, the leather soft against her legs.

When she looked down at herself, she could see her nipples faintly through the sheer silk. Bulma's mouth moved to protest the exposure, but no sound was left to come out. Its intention was obvious. And unbeatable.

"Silence and submission," she heard distantly as they wrapped her like a present. "An off-worlder's fealty and reverence is most attractive to a powerful Saiyan. That is the protocol by which you behave, or you will be disposed of like trash. You are to be simpering, not coy. Saiyan's desire to lead. Let him position you, let him set the pace. Do not complain of any pain, should you wish to live beyond this night. That is most abominable. Praise him for his great strength during the act, and shower him with gratitude after his release."

Bulma felt a burble of indignation boil over from its simmer in her chest. "Not happening!"

Bulma felt the heat of the slap without ever seeing the hand.

It wasn't a rags-to-riches makeover to woo a prince. It wasn't dreamy or glamorous or exciting. It was re-traumatizing. It was reliving the days she had first been seized from her home and treated like disposable goods on one of many Saiyan vessels. It was being made to heel, made small, made transparent. It was becoming less than a person until she had nothing of herself left at all.

The youngest woman leaned in, an off-worlder herself, and glared at her spitefully. "The Prince will crush you. It's more than you deserve, being his play thing for the night. Show some pride."

Another woman pulled her hair. "Do not embarrass us."

And then the eldest concubine, a small terracotta bowl in her aged grip, dipped her thumb into it and drew a bold line under each of Bulma's eyes with red paint, tracing across the angle of her cheekbones. Her thumb was dry and swift, and with her crooked pointer finger, she traced the cupid's bow pout of Bulma's lip with a single line of red pitch to the wet center of her mouth.

Finally, they drew a polished silver tray from the wall, sitting it against the wall. And Bulma, for the first time in almost a decade, confronted her image in a mirror.

She stared, her gaze raking slowly over a reflection she hadn't seen in eight years. Her hands touched the person in the mirror, and she dragged them across her hip, feeling her self even though the stranger's body she was seeing couldn't seem further from her own. Her breasts still stood full under the thin black gauze, and she blinked at them. Symbols of sex and motherhood, two things that had been removed from her future as dispassionately as sterilization. Her breasts and the shadow of hair between her hips under the sheer fabric seemed vastly absurd. Parts of her that were unnecessary. Parts of her that were dangerous to have.

Her feet moved her forward toward the reflection, her hands grazing the bruised circles under weary, paranoid eyes.

She could endure the women's brutalizing. It was part and parcel of any Saiyan experience, intimidation and assault the flavor by which Saiyans spiced their lives. She would never surrender to these women, who were blind to their bondage and sour with false privilege.

It wasn't because of them that she began to cry.

It wasn't the disappointment and resentment festering inside her towards the Prince, who flaunted his control of her with little respect for her, his puppet, dancing to his whim on his strings. Despite his lips on her neck, his tail unwound, his admission of desire...his affection did not exist without his using her. His warmth, his foresight for her welfare, sharing his food with her...The thing clenched tight around her chest again, and hatred made it hard to breathe...It was all an exchange, and she had to give up parts of herself to beg for scraps of his niceties. The harem, she had thought, was surely the final thing the empire could do to reduce her and rip away the last remnant of who she'd ever been.

It wasn't just that she may have had a scrap of dignity and pride left and that it throbbed with violation.

But that it twisted the knife, the knife of her own desire, held by the object of it.

For that, and for the thing that stared back at her in the mirror—it was for herself that she could not endure it any longer, and that she could not forgive.

Bulma began to sob.

She dimly registered one of the concubines clucking under her breath as they put the mirror away, the words "dumb thing," "uncivilized" and "never before seen a mirror" murmured in Saiyam.

Bulma's legs gave out from under her, and in her kidnapper's finest silks, she cried raggedly at the irony of it all.

* * *

"You look handsome, Gohan," whispered Bulma as he sat quietly with his legs folded beside her, but it took her a moment to gather her energy and glance up at him with red rimmed eyes so he knew it wasn't just a cursory compliment. "You look like the Saiyan you are." She couldn't stop the humorless chuckle which followed.

Gohan crossed his arms across his chest, but then gave into curiosity and pulled at his own suit, the white boots and the thong that tied his unruly hair back at his neck, his hands on evidence of his complicated and unwanted heritage.

"Well, I'm all gussied up now. I think they've indoctrinated me," she chuffed wryly, meeting his gaze with her trembling one, trying to lighten the situation, to make their circumstances less hard on him.

"This is temporary," he assured her with boyish optimism.

He was trying. Kami bless him, he was trying so hard to make her feel better when he was rattled himself.

"Vegeta wouldn't force you to be a, a—" Gohan blushed.

"Wouldn't he?" Bulma rested her chin on her palm. "Saiyans are good at one thing: shows of power and displays of force. He's not any more dignified than the rest of them." She seemed to deflate even further. "Let's be real: he kidnapped us and forced us to work for him. He forced us into his seraglio. He wasn't protecting us, he was using us, and now he's putting us back on the shelf until he needs to use us again." Bulma's face grew dark. "A Saiyan doesn't spend his time tiptoeing around an off-worlder's feelings, least of all the King of the bastards." She wrapped her arms around herself, the anger on her face fading. "I'm just so tired of being someone's property, Gohan. First the Empire's, now its scion. My body is not my own." Her voice was weary and hollow. "I know I should be strong for you," she admitted into her lap, "but I'm just so tired."

"You'll be free soon," Gohan inserted uncertainly, patting her knee. "Dad's coming. Even if the Prince wanted to force you to stay, he can't say no to Dad. If he can't convince him, Dad will make him let go of you."

Bulma snorted. Then looked away sullenly. "I guess it's for the best I never had children. I'm not cut out for taking care of another person, most of all myself." Her vision watered. "I can't protect you. All of my attempts to save myself I fumbled. In this era, when so many have no voice and the rule of law is just physical power, I can't survive. What good am I in this universe? Why stick around at all?"

Bulma, legs folded under her and forehead resting against the wall, seemed to be making herself smaller and smaller. Her skin pale against the black gauze, the ape on her belt roaring against her thin and trembling fingers as she trailed her fingers over it, its simple juxtaposition all that the Saiyan Empire was and she wasn't.

Gohan set his jaw, even if it trembled.

He had always been sheltered by an adult. If not his parents, then Bulma.

He would carry them both through the fires if he had to.

* * *

Bulma had watched the sun out the window intensely for over an hour. Gohan was becoming sleepy with it, when suddenly, in the middle of the hostile silence of the back room to which she had retreated, Bulma bolted out of her seat, jaw tight and eyes shining.

And then hopped up onto the windowsill and pushed herself out the window.

Gohan jumped up frantically.

"Where are you going?" He struggled to keep his panicked voice at a whisper, leaning out the window.

Bulma crouched in the sand before standing. She scowled, her eyes gleaming with determination. "I'm waiting for your father far away from this purgatory."

Gohan whitened.

"You better keep up if you know what's good for you!"

"That's not a good idea," he argued, a pleading note threaded through.

"Look, Gohan," she snipped while trudging away, and with a guilty glance back into their empty room, he dove out the window and scrambled after her.

"Ongdala is almost at its peak—" she pointed to the middle sun—"and even if it's reckless and stupid, I can't take it anymore. I'm done. I was done eight years ago," she corrected, voice breaking.

Suddenly the ground rumbled under foot and a concussive blast boomed, popping their ear drums before the following rush of air slapped them. They both smashed their hands against the wall to keep themselves upright, their hearts racing as they heard screams from within.

Gohan and Bulma stared at one another, the whites of their eyes clearly visible and not daring to breathe for the long, long moment the cracks and peals of a violent thunder climaxed and then cantered to silence.

They heard distant voices, orders given, and then the rooms they had escaped only minutes ago were quiet as a grave.

Gohan's eyes were wet, but his brows knit with growing fury. "Those were Saiyan voices," he whispered.

"Why would they attack the harem?" Bulma couldn't catch her breath. "Why would Saiyans kill royal concubines?" During the coronation, which every Saiyan in the palace would be attending.

Blood wafted on the breeze, the blasts still ringing their ears.

It didn't make sense. The harem hadn't been used in years. No one of consequence or power resided there. All it was currently was a reverent symbol of the King's power.

Bulma's eyes widened. "They're purging the palace."

Gohan stared at her in horror.

"But why—"

"They're eliminating royal influence and tradition. Saiyans are attacking Saiyans and liquidating royal property." Bulma could feel her heart hammer in her chest, her hands tremble as the reality of it descended on her. "They don't intend on allowing Vegeta to ascend at all!"

Bulma rushed to the window ledge, but Gohan tugged her arm and shook his head. "You don't know if anyone's still in there. They could have posted someone on guard."

"We have to warn Vegeta!" Bulma was frantic now. "How do we get out of here?" Her thoughts buzzed and spun.

Gohan looked grim, then looked away, jaw tight. When he turned back to Bulma, he revealed a look of defeat that was unsettling to see on a face that so clearly looked like his father's. "Bulma, what help could we possibly be?" He gestured around them. "Neither of us are powerful enough to defend ourselves from even a third class Saiyan. The palace is probably crawling with those guys. And if we got to Prince Vegeta, what would we do? We need to stay here to protect ourselves and let my dad do the work."

"I can't believe the words that are coming out of your mouth right now," she replied hollowly. "I'm so very disappointed in you, Gohan. People's lives are at stake! And we have to warn him! The Guard has turned against him. He thinks they're loyal, and they're the ones guarding the damned coronation!"

Tears welled in his eyes now. "I'm just trying to be sensible and keep you alive!"

She growled, trying to contain the sting of her urgency. "If we don't try to do something, your father may have nothing left to save."

Goku scowled and looked away, turning it over in his head. "We'll be killed," he argued. His father was almost here. He needed to leave it all to him. Gohan was untested, untrained. He didn't want to hurt anybody. He wasn't a killer. What could he do?

"I can't sit around and do nothing. I can't stand to even think of him being confronted..." She bit her lip. "And what about the innocents in the palace? The women who lay dead just behind this wall? The price of saving our own hides is the death of others. I'm scared, too, Gohan, but how is that right?"

That seemed to shake Gohan. "I can't believe they'd do that." His hand fisted against the wall. "How could they?" He asked brokenly.

"And they'll only kill more!"

Gohan couldn't kill.

But he could defend.

He was a Saiyan, after all.

He grasped Bulma's arm and ran toward the window. "Let's go."

* * *

Bulma was yanked back by the back of her dress, choking her, and she grit her teeth, glaring daggers at Gohan.

"Sorry," he apologized, looking sheepish. "But look. There." He pointed down the hall. "Third doorway on the right."

The Earthlings hovered inside the deep recess of the doorway, protected by shadows. Bulma remembered the layout of the palace from her foray into the Military Wing, but vaguely, and they'd slipped in and out of doorways and rooms to avoid Guard members since poking their heads out of the gates of the harem. The palace was eerily empty, but the silence was pocked with interims of distant screams and the crack of _ki_.

Sure enough, down the hall stood two men, bodies of dead Saiyans littered around them. Not Guard members this time, but off-worlders, their armor markedly different from the Saiyans. The shoulder plates and codpieces were long and pointed, their skin vibrantly orange and purple, and each had an Imperial scouter over their ear.

They were PTO soldiers.

Cold mercenaries.

"What did the brass say?" The purple one's voice rang throughout the hall, but it was more of a complaint than a query.

"Orders are from the Saiyan Council itself."

"Is it true they've formed an alliance with these Saiyans? Ain't that a mockery."

"Shut your mouth and do as your told, or there'll be nothing left of you when it comes time to collect your paycheck."

"All I'm saying is this better be worth it."

The two off-worlders flew down the hall together. Silence filled the hall until their ears rang with it, and Bulma and Gohan let out a breath.

"The Guard. The Council. Royals. Elites." Bulma listed in shock. "That's most of the palace. That leaves only the Judges, the military, and any other first class Saiyans from outside the palace invited to the ceremony. And now there are mercenaries in the palace. Could our odds get any worse?"

"Even if everyone in his court were to turn on him...even if they're backed by the Cold Empire..." Gohan pondered out loud. "I don't know that the Prince would step down." Gohan watched her, voice tight. "He'd only see it as an even better challenge."

"No." It came in a rush from her mouth. "An alliance like that..." Against a man incapable of surrender. The Empire, and Vegeta, would fall.

Bulma stared down at the pool of blood leaking from a nearby Saiyan servant, widening, reaching its fingers toward her feet.

"Goku needs to arrive now," Bulma grit. "Vegeta might be strong, but he's only one man. He can't hold against so many."

"If there are mercenaries already on the ground," Gohan considered with growing unease, "then they had to have come from somewhere. Backup. Out there." The pair looked out the window at the cloudless sky.

"Or hiding under our noses. There are plenty of off-worlders here. They could blend in easily."

They glanced outside the windows at the city's blinking lights.

Gohan and Bulma shared a look, and then slipped out of the shadows, racing as quietly as possible over the dead, toward the Hall.

* * *

She should have known it was too easy.

They'd made their way from the east wing of the palace to the south without any confrontations, hiding when required and sprinting down empty halls.

It figured that once they'd reached the stairs to the Hall they'd be caught.

They watched from behind a corner, gaping, as the PTO soldiers swiftly executed the off-worlder servants outside the Hall.

"No," she mouthed, and Gohan cried out silently.

_They mean to kill everyone, not just those who support the monarchy,_ Bulma thought, mouth dry.

And just then, one of the PTO soldiers looked up, eyes locking on Bulma's.

Bulma felt her heart stop.

"Runaways," he said playfully, and floated toward them.

Bulma couldn't catch her breath. She skittered backwards on her hands and feet, rising to her knees to bolt when she was grabbed by the hair and dangled in front of a grinning alien.

It took a second to recognize the growing amber light from the corner of her eye. The PTO soldier caught on as she did, but not quick enough. She only had a split second to see Gohan's enraged face as he burst with _ki_ , shoulders scrunched with uncontrollable anger as a beam of energy shot from his palm, his fingers curled into claws around it. It went right through the mercenary's chest as easily as a bullet through cream.

"Run, Bulma! I'll hold the last one off!"

It was shouted with such fierce resolve that she immediately shot to her feet and scampered for the Hall.

She couldn't just go through the doors. She knew from pouring over the map of the Hall with Vegeta that through those doors lay the entry chamber, where there would be dozens of Royal Guards to run her through.

There were stairs, though, that led to second floor box suites. Empty, Vegeta had said. No one was allowed to be higher than the Prince during his coronation.

She glanced around in a frenzy.

And saw the stone staircase curling around the wall until it met a dark, recessed doorway.

She ran, feet slapping on marble. A bolt of excitement jolted her as her feet met cool stone, up, up, up, but a shaft of ki ripped through the air in front of her. Bulma skidded to a stop and blinked, the scent of ozone and singed hair blanketing her.

She choked, spinning around to see the one who shot it, and, in slow motion, watched him fire off one more. She almost froze up, almost—but threw herself back instead, her feet slipping on the edge of the stairs.

As if swimming, Bulma fell backwards, arms outstretched, spinning.

The energy beam darted above her and found its mark against the wall, scorching it.

She let out a squeal as her hand clamped over edge of the stair, and she swayed, dangling.

She reached out and grasped the edge with her other hand, and it bit forcefully into her palm.

Her shoulders aching with her weight, Bulma continued to claw her way upward, trying to heave herself over, bare toes almost finding purchase on stone...

She heard him before she felt him, the whoosh of air as he cut through it before his arms wrapped around her waist and he hauled them both upward, out of the line of sight of the guards who were racing around the corner.

"In here!" He was peeling back a door at the top of a flight of stairs.

Bulma pushed in behind him, causing them to both fall to the floor, but Gohan closed the door quickly and quietly.

"The Hall," she breathed.

They had done it.

The air was clammy in the balcony suite of the Hall. It was dark, and a few chairs, upholstered in red velvet, hid them from view.

Tentatively, they crawled forward on their bellies, and the balcony grew closer.

Then they crouched on the balls of their feet, peering from between the spaces in the veranda.

A sea of Saiyans. Hundreds and hundreds of them, hair black as raven's wings and all fitted in their best armor. They were staring forward in their seats with the solemnity of a church service, cleaved in half by an empty aisle running through the crowd. A long, vividly red carpet had been unrolled down its path. It drew her gaze to the front of the hall, up the dais steps, to the half-circle of robed Saiyans in the back watching the one planted in its center in the pool of sunlight.

He took her breath away.

His suit fit him as if they'd poured it molten over his hard body, wet and deepest black. A scarlet sash hung low on his hips, knotted at his hip like a scarf. Her mouth parted as she drank in the sight of him. Saiyans were no strangers to body forming gear, and not even Royals, who couldn't be conscripted, went without it. But there was something essentially dangerous and revealing about this suit, the sensuous fit for private eyes. His gloves and boots weren't the standard bright white but blackest black, but a pure white cape fluttered from his strong shoulders to the marble floor. Nothing Vegeta did wasn't well-considered, and Bulma wondered at the significance of the cape draping against a strong black field, immaculate, snowy white behind the dark body of the empire itself. The gold circlets round his round biceps gave him the air of a barbarian king, but his bearing was fiercely aristocratic, proud and unapproachable. His posture was unmistakable: he was a threat to all of them in the room simply by existing. He was intimidation, desire, and power made flesh.

Her gaze caressed upwards and lingered on the large mask that completed it, his straight nose and assured jaw beneath it. The mask was adorned with twisted, thick horns—Bulma recognized the horns from the massive creatures in the murals that Oozaru were often depicted fighting—and the toothy upper mandible of an ape in a crown atop his head. She held her breath before releasing it in a gush.

He was beautiful.

She watched the sunlight streaming in through the high windows fill his palm like water, his blood dripping on the flagstones.

Vegeta put his cupped palms to his lips and drank it.

The hall was hushed at the improvised gesture. In his palms he contained the fierce sun and the blood of the empire, held tenderly, before knocking it back and consuming it.

It was a staggeringly clear threat:

Kill me and you kill the empire itself.

I _am_ the empire.

Bulma was pulled from the spectacle by movement from the corner of her eye. Along the walls, in the shadows as the audience gawked at the new King, the Royal Guard began drawing their ritual swords.

"Now, Gohan!" She cried with panic.

Before she knew it, she'd braced her knees and perched, hanging from the ledge, her hair flying back with the gusts from the windows.

Gohan scooped her up and jumped.

They landed in the center of the aisle, red carpet cushioning the jarring landing.

Bulma wasted no time.

"Vegeta!"

Her voice rang out in the silent hall.

The dark figure turned his face to her, standing motionless, the breeze rustling the bottom of his cape, gaze indecipherable under his mask but weighing heavily on her.

"They're killing them all! Everyone outside this hall is dead! Cold mercenaries are clearing the palace. The Royal Guard and the Council has betrayed you!" She jabbed her pointed finger at the doors, where the Royal Guard was peeling from the walls with swords drawn, stalling as the King turned his dark gaze on them.

In an instant, he saw and assessed it all. The Guard, who had betrayed him; the Judges who stood and watched, gaping with disbelief; the panic of the Elites; but mostly, he fixated on the lone woman who stood in the center of the empire surrounded by all its most powerful players, in see-through black silk and shocking blue, blue hair. The world narrowed, and his gaze raked her. He saw the fists clenched at her sides, the urgency on her face, and recognized undeniable concern in eyes whose hue was deep as polished cobalt. The curve of her bare legs and hips, braced wide from her flight, the outline of her breasts and the thatch of hair at the juncture of her thighs, eyes ablaze over the fierce red markings that marked her the crowned Prince's. _Harsala izu_ , his, in the black and red of his House, and bold as any Saiyan. The image spoke to his blood as clearly as if she'd said outright, "I'm yours," and a bolt of unwieldy, violent possessiveness seared him.

Then it was quick. The ache became a catalyst to rage, crackling, lashing fury leashed for far too long. His shoulders stiffened around his ears, his legs bracing.

"Get her out of here now!" Vegeta roared, his voice barely carrying over the shrill, thunderous vacuum of his increasing _ki_. Bulma saw it all in slow motion—the Judges in the front row standing, turning their backs to Vegeta in order to defend him; the Royal Guard pulled from the walls, short swords drawn; the Council bolting upwards, shouting for the Guard and Elites to attack.

And then Gohan barreled into her with his shoulder, already lifting off the ground and above Vegeta to shoot through the enormous arched windows behind them. It was a calculated move, ensuring Vegeta could suppress any last-minute attacks.

And the Emperor of the Saiyan Empire began his upward spiral toward his furthest limits of ki.

Toward killing them all.


End file.
